Wild by Cheryl Strayed

This book made a great book club read and it was a lot more thought provoking than I thought after immediately finishing it. The more I thought about it, the more layers I saw. It made for great discussion. But only a few quotes really stood out, which is not a bad thing. Sometimes it takes only one to make a book. Here are the standouts for me:

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked. p.51

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. p. 119

"I don't know what's right," I said, though I did. I knew exactly what I had to do. It was what I'd had to do so many times now: choose the best of two horrible things. page 160

I couldn't make them understand why I'd had to smash things up. But you seemed so happy was all they could say. And it was true: we had seemed that way. Just as I'd seemed to be doing okay after my mom died. Grief doesn't have a face. p.212

     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 a course.   ....He [stepfather] hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered. p.304