When you say you experience my writing as sacred, what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother. Sugar is the temple I built … - Cheryl Strayed

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.

But now that she was dying, I knew everything. My mother was in me already. Not just the parts of her that I knew, but the parts of her that had come before me too.