{"author":"Cheryl Strayed","author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed","total_quotes":92,"quotes":[{"text":"It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.","author":"Cheryl Strayed","tags":["inspirational","life","meaning","memoir","philosophy-of-life","storytelling","writing-advice"],"id":3798,"author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed"},{"text":"A beloved daughter who now spent holidays alone.","author":"Cheryl Strayed","tags":["grief"],"id":7741,"author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed"},{"text":"What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have?","author":"Cheryl Strayed","tags":["forgiveness"],"id":14541,"author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed"},{"text":"Each evening, I ached for the shelter of my tent, for the smallest sense that something was shielding me from the entire rest of the world, keeping me safe not from danger, but from vastness itself. I loved the dim, clammy dark of my tent, the cozy familiarity of the way I arranged my few belongings all around me each night.","author":"Cheryl Strayed","tags":["camping","danger","life","shelter"],"id":33478,"author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed"},{"text":"I was twenty-two, the same age she was when she'd been pregnant with me. She was going to leave my life at the same moment that I came into hers, I thought. For some reason that sentence came fully formed into my head just then, temporarily blotting out the Fuck them prayer. I almost howled in agony. I almost choked to death on what I knew before I knew. I was going to live the rest of my life without my mother.","author":"Cheryl Strayed","tags":["grief","loss","love","mom","mother"],"id":41981,"author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed"},{"text":"Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.","author":"Cheryl Strayed","tags":["embracing","hurt"],"id":42629,"author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed"},{"text":"Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It's one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before.","author":"Cheryl Strayed","tags":["change"],"id":46719,"author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed"},{"text":"You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.You have to pay your electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.","author":"Cheryl Strayed","tags":["life","responsibility","self"],"id":47386,"author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed"},{"text":"You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don't have to justif your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don't have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you've got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that's all.","author":"Cheryl Strayed","tags":["advice","careers","cheryl-strayed","dear-sugar","the-future","tiny-beautiful-things"],"id":47996,"author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed"},{"text":"The most fascinating thing to me about your letter is that buried beneath all the anxiety and sorrow and fear and self-loathing, there’s arrogance at its core. It presumes you should be successful at twenty-six, when really it takes most writers much longer to get there.","author":"Cheryl Strayed","tags":["arrogance","quarter-life-crisis","success","twenties","writing"],"id":49249,"author_id":"Cheryl+Strayed"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":92,"pages":10,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}