Cheryl Strayed Quotes

Woman is learning for herself that not self-sacrifice, but self development, is her first duty in life; and this, not primarily for the sake of others but that she may become fully herself.

Have your own life before you become somebody's wife.

What does it mean to be an individual? What does it mean to flourish?

I want an identity outside of my work.

Being a Sikh meant having to do what Mom and Dad said, and going to temple, and Mom and Dad choosing who I would marry. But going to an American school taught me that I was the one who's supposed to make those choices.

I wanted to have a personal life that I fully inhabited, not because I am such a great mom, but for me.

If you want to participate in life, you have to deny your identity.

Selfness is an essential fact of life. The thought of nonselfness, precise sameness is terrifying.

Most of society thinks that biography is destiny, that the past equals the future, and of course it does if you live there...but what we really have to remind ourselves is that decision is the ultimate power.

Once you don't have freedom and you're obliged to do many things you don't want, and it becomes a routine, then your identity is at stake because you can feel that you are not anymore yourself, that you are what they want you to be - and you can lose yourself.

The woman's personal identity is a vast undiscovered country -- with which Society has yet to acquaint itself, and by which it is yet to be revolutionized.

If you begin to give away parts of yourself, eventually you'll give it all. And once you've lost yourself, haven't you lost everything?

She's been everybody else's girl, maybe one day she'll be her own.

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?' " 'The way I want it?' " 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?' " 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.' " 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.' " 'Mess it up how?' " 'Forgot it.' " 'Forgot?' " 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it. All anyone can do is to point out ways and means which have been helpful to others. Perhaps they will serve as suggestions to stimulate your own thinking until you know what it is that will fulfill you, will help you to find out what you want to do with your life.

Even though I take care of the mom stuff, I've maintained my own individuality with my own projects, and I think our girls see that I'm not just the mom or the wife.

For the first time in my life I've done something for me and by choice and not because somebody told me it was good or bad.

I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time, but I can alter its Posture and, as Boys do turn a looking-glass against the Sunne, so I will dazzle you all.

To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.

Pride comes from a place of real acknowledgment that somebody's actually living their life for themselves, and I want to be that example for my son.

The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself.

Don't shrink to meet the expectations of others, grow to become the person you want to be.