‘Wild’ author releases ‘manuals for the soul’

Quotes point us in right direction, Cheryl Strayed says of her book.

For writer Cheryl Strayed, who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail after her mother died and her marriage imploded, quotations serve as concise little instruction manuals for the soul.

They help us focus, they point us in the right direction. They talk back when that voice inside our head tells us we can’t.

So when her publisher, struck by how many fans have shared excerpts from Strayed’s books online, suggested she compile a book of quotes from her own writing, she agreed. The result appeared recently on bookstore shelves, in the form of a small, bright green clothbound volume titled

“Brave Enough” ($16.95; Knopf ). Inside are more than 100 of Strayed’s quotes and thoughts, each on a single page.

Strayed’s book “Wild,” based on her backpacking trip when she was 22 years old, became a national best-seller in 2012 and an Oscar-nominated film starring Reese Witherspoon in 2014. Her other works include the essay collection “Tiny Beautiful Things,” the novel “Torch,” and her “Dear Sugar” advice columns.

“Brave Enough” pulls from all of them. She’ll read from the book Saturday during an appearance at BookPeople. She’s also the keynote speaker Friday morning at a Hospice Austin fundraiser.

“The quotes that mean the most to me are the ones that I’ve observed have meant the most to readers,” Strayed says.

One — “Be brave enough to break your own heart” — even inspired the title of the new book.

“What that means to me is sometimes we have to make choices that are hard,” she says. “They could still make us sad and uncertain and alone and scared, but they’re going to be better for us in long run.”

For her, that meant ending her first marriage. For others, it could mean pursuing a passion, quitting a job or moving across the country.

The book is filled with gems that smack you in the face with their truth. Among them? “Acceptance is a small quiet room.” “Keep walking.” “Forward is the direction of real life.” “Ask yourself: What is the best I can do? And then do that.”

Strayed hopes lines like those help readers realize they are not alone in their struggles.

“I hope they get from the book what I have gotten from other writers over time — a concise and pretty intense spark of inspiration or consolation or explanation,” she says.

One of Strayed’s own favorite quotes comes from the Charlotte Bronte novel “Jane Eyre”: “It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”

“So much of my own grief over my mother’s young death, and my struggle against it in some ways, was wanting to reject that faith. Charlotte Bronte was speaking to me across many years ... I turn to those quotes for strength,” she says.

The last few years have been busy for Strayed — traveling and promoting “Wild,” working on the movie based on the book, and raising two kids, now in fourth and fifth grade. She says she hopes to step back from her busy public life in 2016, although she and her husband, a documentary filmmaker whom she met nine days after finishing her backpacking trip, are writing a pilot for HBO based on an adaptation of “Tiny Beautiful Things.” She plans to write more, too. “There’s always another book. That’s the story of my life,” she says.

This weekend’s trip to Austin won’t be the first for Strayed, who lives in Portland.

She first visited in 1992 and returned in 2012 to speak at the Texas Book Festival. She says she’s looking forward to speaking at the Hospice Austin event and wants to lend her voice of support to the work they do. Strayed’s mother died of cancer at the age of 45.

“I’ve been through that experience of being beside someone as they got sick and died. It’s just a powerfully painful experience, but it can also be a powerfully beautiful time,” Strayed says. “It’s a time we’ll never forget.”

While she’s here, she also hopes to drop by the LBJ Presidential Library to check out the museum’s Legacy Gallery. Strayed is mentioned in the exhibit, which is dedicated to the impact that legislation passed by President Lyndon B. Johnson had on the country.

The impact was personal for Strayed. The National Trails System Act, passed in 1968, created the Pacific Crest Trail.

That trail changed the course of her life.