top of page
"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."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Solitude quotes

"It was a different sense of isolation from what he normally felt in Japan. And not such a bad feeling, he decided. Being alone in two senses of the word was maybe like a double negation of isolation. In other words, it made perfect sense for him, a foreigner, to feel isolated here. The thought calmed him. He was in exactly the right place."

"I am lonely, sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me."

"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

"In solitude, struggles occur that no one else knows about. Inner battles are fought here that seldom become fodder for sermons or illustrations for books. God, who probes our deepest thoughts during protracted segments of solitude, opens our eyes to things that need attention. It is here He makes us aware of those things we try to hide from others."

"To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all."

"Isolation, for him, had become a basic sine qua non for existence and loneliness, his sole companion like a perfectly faithful twin. He was someone for whom even happiness would cry for, mourning the death of his sentiments and murdering the existence of his soul."
Explore more quotes by Cheryl Strayed

"Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally I'd see their beauty and solemnity so plainly that I'd realize in a piercing way that my mother was right. That someday I would be grateful and that in fact I was grateful now, that I felt something growing in me that was strong and real."

"But as you are surely aware, forgiveness doesn't mean you let the forgiven stomp all over you once again. Forgiveness means you've found a way forward that acknowledges harm done and hurt caused without letting either your anger or your pain rule your life or define your relationship with the one who did you wrong."

"The only way you'll find out if you 'have it in you' is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your 'limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude' is to produce. You have limitations. You are in some way inept. This is true of every writer, and it's especially true of writers who are twenty-six. You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you."

"The place of true healing is a fierce place. It's a giant place. it's a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light."

"It was only when I rounded a bend and glimpsed the white peaks ahead that I doubled my abilities, only when I thought how far i had yet to go that i lost faith that I would get there."

"It felt now as if I'd never known them and I couldn't know them again. It seemed to me that whatever had existed back in the place where I'd grown up was so far away now, impossible to retrieve."

"There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course."
bottom of page