Clarissa Pinkola is a poet, psychoanalyst, and post-traumatic stress disorder specialist from the United States who grew up with ethnic and oral traditions that are now all but extinct.
She is a first-generation American writer who grew up in a small rural community with 600 residents close to the Great Lakes. She comes from immigrant and refugee families who either couldn't read or write or could only do so sluggishly.
Famous Clarissa Pinkola Estes Quotes
These famous Clarissa Pinkola Estes quotes should motivate you on an everyday basis.
“The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands – all these are the making of something, and that something is soul. Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“A runner is real when she takes the first step.”
“When you feel bad, find a person to talk to and cry with, to tell of your anger and other helpless feelings.”
“All strong souls first go to hell before they do the healing of the world they came here for. If we are lucky, we return to help those still trapped below.”
“Within every woman, there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. “
“We all wish to be brave and strong in the face of disaster. We all wish to be looked up to for our endurance and efforts to help others.”
“The most important thing is to hold on, hold out, for your creative life, for your solitude, for your time to be and do, for your very life.”
“Any time I find medicine that’s helpful, I share it with everyone I know.”
“Stories are medicine.”
“About the proper questions is the central action of transformation. Questions are the key that causes the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.”
“To create, one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“This kind of forgetting does not erase memory; it lays the emotion surrounding the memory to rest. “
“I am built close to the ground and of extravagant body.”
“My brain has no heart, and my heart has no brain. That’s why when I speak my mind, I appear heartless, and when I do what’s in my heart, I seem thoughtless.”
“Without art, we live under the illusion that there is only time and not eternity.”
“Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“It’s not by accident that the pristine wilderness of our planet disappears as the understanding of our own inner wild nature fades.”
“If women were in charge of everything, there would be women tyrants. If black people were in charge, there would be black tyrants. If Hispanics were in charge, then Hispanic tyrants.”
“To reasoned people, almost everything is understandable, but evil is forever incomprehensible.”
“A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving.”
“Friends who love you and have warmth for your creative life are the very best suns in the world.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes Quotes for Inspiration
These quotes are exclusively mentioned to inspire people on different perspectives.
“When women are relegated to moods, mannerisms, and contours that conform to a single ideal of beauty and behavior, they are captured in both body and soul and are no longer free.”
“For myself, solitude is rather like a folded-up forest that I carry with me everywhere and unfurl around myself when I have need.”
“Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything – we need only listen.”
“To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.”
“Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.”
“Rather than chairs and tables, I preferred the ground, trees, and caves, for, in those places, I felt I could lean against the cheek of God.”
“It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who says, ‘Nothing good came of this’ is not yet listening.”
- 'The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die'
“It makes utter sense to stay healthy and strong, to be as nourishing to the body as possible. Yet I would have to agree; there is in many women a 'hungry' one inside."
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
"The 'hungry' one inside is longing to be treated respectfully, to be accepted, and in the very least, to be met without stereotyping.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
"But rather than hungry to be a certain size, shape, or height, rather than hungry to fit the stereotype; women are hungry for basic regard from the culture surrounding them."
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
"Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires. ”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
"A lover has to be chosen from soul-craving. To choose just because something mouthwatering stands before you will never satisfy the hunger of the soul-self. And that is what the intuition is for; it is the direct messenger of the soul.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“Though her soul requires seeing, the culture around her requires sightlessness. Though her soul wishes to speak its truth, she is pressured to be silent.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
" Their dreams of their twenties may be lying in a crumple. There may be broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“Choosing of friends and lovers, not to mention teachers, is critical to remaining conscious, remaining intuitive, remaining in charge of the fiery light that sees and knows.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“When a woman speaks her truth, fires up her intention and feeling, stays tight with the instinctive nature, she is singing; she is living in the wild breath-stream of the soul.”
“The predation of wolves and women by those who misunderstand them is strikingly similar.”
“If you have yet to be called an incorrigible, defiant woman, don’t worry; there is still time.”
“A woman who is starved for her real soul-life may look ‘cleaned up and combed’ on the outside, but on the inside, she is filled with dozens of pleading hands and empty mouths.”
“Since time out of mind, a considered act of heroism has been the cure for stultifying ambivalence.”
“The soul has no gender.”
“Be wild; that is how to clear the river.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“Modern storytellers are the descendants of an immense and ancient community of holy people, troubadours, bards, griots, cantadoras, cantors, traveling poets, bums, hags, and crazy people.”
“Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase.”
“To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many, many beginnings- all in the same relationship.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe; there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes Quotes About Women
These quotes are exclusively for women dealing with all sorts of difficulties in life, struggling. This ensures that magical things happen.
“I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in my practice to delineate the various typologies of personality as cats and hens and ducks and swans and so forth."
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
"Sometimes, to make the point, I have to move to other animal metaphors. I like to use mice. What if you were raised by the mice people? But what if you’re, say, a swan."
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
"If warranted, I might ask my client to assume for a moment that she is a swan who does not realize it. Assume also for a moment that she has been brought up by or is currently surrounded by ducks.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“We all begin the process before we are ready before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us."
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“When seeking guidance, don’t ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
"We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“There is nothing wrong with ducks, I assure them, or with swans. But ducks are ducks, and swans are swans."
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
"Swans and mice hate each other’s food for the most part. They each think the other smells funny. They are not interested in spending time together, and if they did, one would be constantly harassing the other.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“Tears are a river that takes you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.”
“I learned about the sacred art of self-decoration with the monarch butterflies perched atop my head, lightning bugs as my night jewelry, and emerald-green frogs as bracelets.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
"The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“All the ‘not readies,’ all the ‘I need time,’ are understandable, but only for a short while. The truth is that there is never a ‘completely ready,’ there is never a really ‘right time.’"
“Failure is a greater teacher than success.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear, and then act upon what you know to be true.”
“Bone by bone, hair by hair, Wild Woman comes back. Through night dreams, through events, half understood and half remembered…”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”
“Dogs are the magicians of the universe.”
“Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation- in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness."
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
Thought Provoking Clarissa Pinkola Estés Quotes
Pinkola Estés' thought-provoking quotes can help society build a better world.
“You must become an activist if you are going to live the natural life.”
“The point of art is not simply to express ourselves, but to create an external, concrete form in which the soul of our lives can be evoked and contained.”
“I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“Though her soul requires seeing, the culture around her requires sightlessness. Though her soul wishes to speak its truth, she is pressured to be silent.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“The desire to force love to live only in its most positive form is what causes love ultimately to fall over dead.”
“Go out in the woods, go out. If you don’t go out in the woods, nothing will ever happen, and your life will never begin.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“The wild woman is fluent in the language of dreams, images, passion, and poetry.”
“The deterioration of symbols is natural. They wear out, needing to be reclaimed, recreated, returned to the spirit.”
“To love pleasure takes little. To love truly takes a hero who can manage his own fear.”
“Be proud of your scars. They have everything to do with your strength and what you’ve endured. They’re a treasure map to the deep self.”
“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”
“You know the best thing about having a house? You get to plant whatever you want in the yard and watch it grow.”
“When seeking guidance, don’t ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.”
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“There is no one a wildish woman loves better than a mate who can be her equal.”
“Asking the proper question is the central act of transformation!”
“To be poor and be without trees is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy.”
“I have to go to the woods, and I have to meet the wolf, or else my life will never begin.”
“How does one know if she has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage; you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him. You tend to have nothing left to say about it all.”
“Women's curiosity was given a negative connotation, whereas men were called investigative. Women were called nosy, whereas men were called inquiring.”
“The doors to the world of the wild are few but precious."
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“There is a time in our lives, usually in mid-life when a woman has to make a decision - possibly the most important psychic decision of her future life - and that is, whether to be bitter or not."
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
“In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity."
- 'Women Who Run With The Wolves'
