Quotes from Brave Enough

" Reading Brave Enough several times in a row alters the molecular structure of your cowardice." - Theo Pauline Nestor

" Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. That nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part it worked. Every time I felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn’t long before I actually wasn’t afraid." - Cheryl Strayed

“Right before [the movie] Wild premiered… I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘You are not allowed to think anything negative about your body, your weight, or your looks anymore. If you think those things, push them out of my mind.’” - Cheryl Strayed

“Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It’s up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.” - Cheryl Strayed

“The first question I have them answer is ‘What’s the question at the core of your work?'” she said. Then she shared that hers was “How can I live without my mother?” She said that after her students form this first question, she asks them to come up with a second question–a universal one that asks “What question are you trying to answer for others?” Cheryl said that the universal question for her work has been “How do we go on when we’ve lost the essential thing?” The second question, she explained, is how the work becomes not just about the writer but about everyone as “we’ve all– at some point in our lives–lost the essential thing.”

http://writingismydrink.com/2015/12/05/what-i-learned-about-life-and-writing-onstage-with-cheryl-strayed/