Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it wil… - Cheryl Strayed

All through my childhood and adolescence I’d asked and asked, making her describe those scenes and more, wanting to know who said what and how, what she’d felt inside while it was going on, where so-and-so stood and what time of day it was. And she’d told me, with reluctance or relish, laughing and asking why on earth I wanted to know. I wanted to know. I couldn’t explain. 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.

"The void?" I'd asked, crestfallen.
"it's a good thing," she said. "It's the place where things are born, where they begin. Think about how a black hole absorbs energy and then releases it into something that's new and alive."

you are so goddamned young. Which means about eight of the ten things you have decided about yourself will over time prove to be false. The other two things will prove to be so true that you’ll look back in twenty years and howl.