There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do … - Cheryl Strayed

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

Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life.

The kindest and most meaningful thing anyone ever said to me is: Your mother would be proud of you. ... The strange and painful truth is that I'm a better person because I lost my mom young. When you say you excperienced my writing as sacred, what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother. Sugar is the temple I build in my obliterated place. I'd give it all back in a snap, but the fact is, my grief taught me things. ... It required me to suffer. It compelled me to reach.