And if there’s one thing I believe more than I believe anything else, it’s that you can’t fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually w… - Cheryl Strayed

She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.

Blood is thicker than water, my mother had always said when I was growing up, a sentiment I'd often disputed. But it turned out that it didn't matter whether she was right or wrong. They both flowed out of my cupped palms.

[Books] were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually living in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear.