Glennon Doyle is an American author, activist and founder of Together Rising, a non-profit organization assisting women and children in crisis.
Born in 1976, Doyle had struggles with bulimia and addiction in her early life.
Her writing career started with her blog, Momastery, which led to her first memoir, Carry On, Warrior, in 2013. Love
Warrior followed in 2016 and was selected for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0.
Her third memoir, Untamed, published in 2020, was chosen for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club and sold over two million copies.
A TV series based on Untamed is in development. Doyle launched the podcast We Can Do Hard Things in 2021.
Related: Eric Carle Quotes from German-American Author of Children’s Books and Alyssa Cole Quotes from the Popular American Author
Doyle was married to Craig Melton, with whom she has three children and is now married to Abby Wambach.
I have selected the most thoughtful quotes by Glennon Doyle below.
Best Glennon Doyle Quotes
We only control what we don’t trust. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We are so afraid of dying. Also of living. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Kind people are brave people. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton.
If I want my world to be less vicious, then I must become more gentle. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah. ~ Glennon Doyle.
It turned out that what I needed most was inside the one place I’d been running from my entire life – pain. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We have to get back into our own bodies and figure out what the hell we want to do. And then the next step is doing it without explaining ourselves. ~ Glennon Doyle.
You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton.
Grief shatters. If you let yourself shatter and then you put yourself back together, piece by piece, you wake up one day and realize that you have been completely reassembled. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I became a writer so I could stay at home alone in my pajamas, reading and writing about the importance of human connection and community. It is an almost perfect existence. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Sometimes the rewards of risk don’t leave us wrecked. Sometimes we find our passion, our purpose, courage, connection, and comfort. Every good thing in our lives is a direct result of risk. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The anxiety that makes it difficult to exist in my own skin also makes it difficult to exist in a world where so many people are in so much pain and that makes me a relentless activist. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Grief is a cocoon from which we emerge new. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Top Glennon Doyle Quotes
To me, faith is not a public allegiance to a set of outer beliefs, but a private surrender to the inner knowing. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Nothing you can ever do will make me love you more, and nothing you can ever do will make me love you less. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Freedom is not being for or against an ideal, but creating your own existence from scratch. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Grief and pain are like joy and peace, they are not things we should try to snatch from each other. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. ~ Glennon Doyle.
So what is it in a human life that creates bravery, kindness, wisdom, and resilience? What if it’s pain? What if it’s a struggle? ~ Glennon Doyle.
I wondered if joy had as much to teach me as pain did. If so, I wanted to know. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I cannot be in the moment because I am too afraid of what the next moment will bring. I have to be ready. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Life is hard – not because we’re doing it wrong, just because it’s hard. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I had been deceived. The only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me. ~ Glennon Doyle.
My purpose is clearer today than it has been in years – love, courage, truth. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I think we are only bitter about other people’s joy in direct proportion to our commitment to keep joy from ourselves. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Inspirational Glennon Doyle Quotes
I’m not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Don’t let yourself become so concerned with raising a good kid that you forget you already have one. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I have decided that I want to be in love with a person, not a feeling. I want to be found in love, not lost in it. I’d rather exist than disappear. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The truest, most beautiful life never promises to be an easy one. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Maybe the yes comes before the readiness. Maybe you say yes and then you become equipped to handle whatever is about to happen. ~ Glennon Doyle.
There is always more on its way. More opportunities, more ideas, more love. Know that there is enough. Know that you are enough. Know that you have enough. ~ Glennon Doyle.
My courage will come from knowing I can handle whatever I encounter there – because I was designed by my creator to not only survive pain and love but also to become whole inside it. I was born to do this. I am a Warrior. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyway. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We are at war with our bodies, our minds, our souls. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Bring all of yourself to life. And if you’re told you’re ‘too much,’ smile and think – maybe. Or maybe their capacity is too small? ~ Glennon Doyle.
Privilege is being born on third base. Ignorant privilege is thinking you’re there because you hit a triple. Malicious privilege is complaining that those starving outside the ballpark aren’t waiting patiently enough. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We ask if our ideas make sense instead of assuming they do. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I decided that if I kept doing the ‘right’ thing, I would spend my life following someone else’s directions instead of my own. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Progress through something traumatic, it’s not linear. It’s not like we go from unhealthy to healthy, failure to success. I think it’s all circular. You just come back around to the same pain and the same loneliness. But each time you come around, you’re stronger from the climb. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Who else but a sibling travels with you from the start of life’s path to the bitter end? ~ Glennon Doyle.
If you feel something calling you to dance or write or paint or sing, please refuse to worry about whether you’re good enough. Just do it. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Thoughtful Glennon Doyle Quotes
It’s nearly impossible to blaze one’s own path while following in someone else’s footsteps. ~ Glennon Doyle.
They look because she’s lovely but they stare because she is love. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Rebellion is as much of a cage as obedience is. They both mean living in reaction to someone else’s way instead of forging your own. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I think I love my people more than normal people love their people. My love is so overwhelming and terrifying and uncomfortable and complicated that I need to hide from it. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Service and art are the two things that have saved me. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The thing that gets me thinking and questioning most deeply is a leader who warns me not to think or question. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Healing is not the reward for those who love the most or best. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I see your pain and it is difficult and it is hard, but it was made just for you and I also see that your courage is greater than your fear. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The braver I am, the luckier I get. ~ Glennon Doyle.
There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We all want purpose and connection. Tell me what breaks your heart, and I’ll point you toward both. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Life is alchemy, and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I used to numb my feelings and hide. Now I feel my feelings and share. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Motivational Glennon Doyle Quotes
People will like me or not, but being liked is not my one thing—integrity is. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We can either control ourselves or love ourselves, but we can’t do both. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Wherever you go, there you are. Your emptiness goes with you. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Self-love means that I have a relationship with myself built on trust and loyalty. ~ Glennon Doyle.
That’s how you can tell that you’re filling yourself with the wrong things. You use a lot of energy, and in the end, you feel emptier and less comfortable than ever. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Why does a woman’s neutral face mean anger, while a man’s neutral face means neutral? ~ Glennon Doyle.
Life is a conversation. Make it a good one. ~ Glennon Doyle.
People who need help sometimes look a lot like people who don’t need help. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I learned that I need to move toward the pain. Pain doesn’t go away. If you don’t embrace it, it will be passed onto someone else, usually those around you. ~ Glennon Doyle.
What if pain – like love – is just a place where brave people visit? ~ Glennon Doyle.
If you are uncomfortable – in deep pain, angry, yearning, confused – you don’t have a problem, you have a life. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Every time you pretend to be less than you are, you steal permission from other women to exist fully. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Wise Glennon Doyle Quotes
I think the way to get to any place worth going and any person worth knowing is love. Keep it simple today. I love you. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The sun shows up every morning, no matter how bad you’ve been the night before. It shines without judgment. It never withholds. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We don’t understand why we hurt those we love. ~ Glennon Doyle.
You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it’s hard. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We forgot how to know when we learned how to please. ~ Glennon Doyle.
In response to the world’s problems, it is easy to choose silence. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Perhaps imagination is not where we go to escape reality but where we go to remember it. ~ Glennon Doyle.
A boundary is the edge of one of our root beliefs about ourselves and the world. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Just do the next right thing, one thing at a time. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Maybe Eve was never meant to be our warning. Maybe she was meant to be our model. Own your wanting. Eat the apple. Let it burn. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Your river is strong. Let it flow. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The blueprints of heaven are etched in the deep desires of women. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The deep desires of women are precious. They are magic that has the capacity to lift every person to their greatest, most loving potential. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Faith is not a club to belong to, but a current to surrender to. ~ Glennon Doyle.
In all my close friendships, words are the bricks I use to build bridges. To know someone I need to hear her, and to feel known, I need to be heard by her. The process of knowing and loving another person happens for me through conversation. ~ Glennon Doyle.
What if in skipping the pain, I was missing my lessons? ~ Glennon Doyle.
Famous Glennon Doyle Quotes
Brave is not something you should wait to feel. Brave is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear than fitting in, than following the crowd. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I just think there are as many different versions of feminism as there are women. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Sister each other, because sistering is the best part of life. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I have met myself and I am going to care for her fiercely. ~ Glennon Doyle.
If our goal is to be tolerant of people who are different than we are, then we really are aiming quite low. Traffic jams are to be tolerated. People are to be celebrated. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Life is brutal, but it’s also beautiful. Life is Brutiful. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Because love is not something for which to search or wait or hope or dream. It’s simply something to do. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Be careful with the stories you tell about yourself. ~ Glennon Doyle.
My children do not need me to save them. My children need to watch me save myself. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Blessed are those brave enough to make things awkward, for they wake us up and move us forward. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Trusting people is terrifying. Maybe if love is not a little scary and out of our control, then it is not love at all. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Brave means living from the inside out. Brave means, in every uncertain moment, turning inward, feeling for the knowing, and speaking it out loud. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Every life is an unprecedented experiment. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Inspiring Glennon Doyle Quotes
There is another kind of pain that comes not from losing beautiful things but from never even trying for them. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I did not know that I was supposed to feel everything. I thought I was supposed to feel happy. ~ Glennon Doyle.
God approaches us in the disguise of other people. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Life has valleys and mountains and the people who won’t let themselves experience the agony of being in the valley also don’t get to experience the ecstasy of the mountains. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Love casts out fear. A woman who has recovered her true identity as a love warrior is the most powerful force on earth. All the darkness and shame and pain in the world can’t defeat her. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I could imagine the kind of love in which I was fully seen, known, and cherished. ~ Glennon Doyle.
When people express opinions that differ from yours, take it as a chance to grow. Seek to understand over being understood. Be curious, not defensive. The only way to disarm another human being is by listening. ~ Glennon Doyle.
This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I’m willing to lose anything that requires me to hide any part of myself. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Feminism has to be defined as freedom. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Every time you’re given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I think one of the keys to happiness is accepting that I am never going to be perfectly happy. ~ Glennon Doyle.
When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself. ~ Glennon Doyle.
To me, intimacy is about communication. Through the written or spoken or physically expressed word, communicating is how we get into each other’s hearts and minds. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Popular Glennon Doyle Quotes
You are not crazy. You are a goddamn cheetah. ~ Glennon Doyle.
A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done. She lets the rest burn. ~ Glennon Doyle.
To be brave is to forsake all others to be true to yourself. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Every beautiful thing in life comes out of the mess. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We betray and we are betrayed. We lie and we are lied to. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Loving fiercely and grieving deeply are often two halves of the same whole. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Love is kind, right? It’s not about calling someone out on every little thing you feel. ~ Glennon Doyle.
What if the call of motherhood is not to be a martyr but to be a model? ~ Glennon Doyle.
The opposite of sensitive is not brave. It’s not brave to refuse to pay attention, to refuse to notice, to refuse to feel and know and imagine. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Unique Glennon Doyle Quotes
Reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Because once we feel, know, and dare to imagine more for ourselves, we cannot unfeel, unknow, or unimagine. There is no going back. ~ Glennon Doyle.
It’s okay to feel all of the stuff you’re feeling. You’re just becoming human again. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The change that happens to people who really sit in their pain. Whether it’s a sliver of envy lasting an hour or a canyon of grief lasting decades – it’s revolutionary. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I’ll abandon everyone else’s expectations of me before I’ll abandon myself. I’ll disappoint everyone else before I’ll disappoint myself. I’ll forsake all others before I’ll forsake myself. Me and myself. We are till death do us part. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The journey is learning that pain, like love, is simply something to surrender to. It’s a holy space we can enter with people only if we promise not to tidy up. ~ Glennon Doyle.
You can’t lose people who never even found you. ~ Glennon Doyle.
You can never get enough of what you don’t need. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Judgment is self-abandonment. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Grief is love’s souvenir. It’s our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Treat yourself like someone you love. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Legendary Glennon Doyle Quotes
Having something to say and no one to hear it is so lonely. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. ~ Glennon Doyle.
It’s not the cruel criticism from folks who hate us that scares us away from our knowing, it’s the quiet concern of those who love us. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The only meaningful thing we can offer one another is love. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Expecting less than true friendship in my most important relationship is so depressing. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Life is a quest to find an unfindable thing. We are put here needing something that doesn’t exist here. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Stop making parenthood harder by pretending it’s not hard. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Maybe there is no way for love to fail because the eventual result of all love is new life. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Just show up, be brave, be kind, rest, try again. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Selfless women make for an efficient society but not a beautiful, true, or just one. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Since brokenness is the way of folks, the only way to live peacefully is to forgive everyone constantly, including yourself. ~ Glennon Doyle.
When grief rings. Surrender. There is nothing else to do. The delivery is an utter transformation. ~ Glennon Doyle.
All the devil has to do to win is convince you he’s God. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Nobody is more ready to show up than anybody else. It’s just that some people show up before they’re perfect and before they’re ready. ~ Glennon Doyle.
It’s okay to feel too much and know too little. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I have to search for and depend upon the voice of inner wisdom instead of voices of outer approval. ~ Glennon Doyle.
It is wild to let others be wild. ~ Glennon Doyle.
These things will be hard, but you can do hard things. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Iconic Glennon Doyle Quotes
If I am living bravely, my entire life will become a million deaths and rebirths. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I think sexy is a grown-up word to describe a person who’s confident that she is already exactly who she was made to be. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The facts were right there in front of me to see. But the truth was right there inside of me to feel. ~ Glennon Doyle.
We think our job as humans is to avoid pain, our job as parents is to protect our children from pain, and our job as friends is to fix each other’s pain. Maybe that’s why we all feel like failures so often because we all have the wrong job description for love. ~ Glennon Doyle.
If no pain, then no love. If no darkness, no light. If no risk, then no reward. It’s all or nothing. In this damn world, it’s all or nothing. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Love is the opposite of control. Love demands trust. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Since the day I decided to become sober and a mother, I’ve been trying to become who I am supposed to be. ~ Glennon Doyle.
People who are hurting don’t need avoiders, protectors, or fixers. What we need are patient, loving witnesses. People sit quietly and hold space for us. People stand in helpful vigil to our pain. ~ Glennon Doyle.
The secret of life is not about knowing what to say or do. It’s not about doing love or loss right. Life cannot be handled. The secret is simply to show up. It’s about witnessing it all, even the pain, and letting it touch you and make you not harder, but more tender. ~ Glennon Doyle.
What I want to be, girls, is beautiful. Beautiful means ‘full of beauty.’ Beautiful is not about how you look on the outside. Beautiful is about what you’re made of. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Nobody’s secure, and nobody feels like she completely belongs. Those insecurities are just job hazards of being human. But some people dance anyway, and those people have more fun. ~ Glennon Doyle.
I have learned that if I want to rise, I have to sink first. ~ Glennon Doyle.
A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter. ~ Glennon Doyle.
When her pain is fresh and new, let her have it. Don’t try to take it away. Forgive yourself for not having that power. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Addiction is a hiding place where sensitive people go. I was a super-sensitive kid – addiction is where I went to hide from risk, to hide from pain, to hide from love. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Being fully human is not about feeling happy, it’s about feeling everything. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Numbness keeps us from becoming. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Our judgment is self-protection. It’s a cage we put around ourselves. We hope it will keep danger out, but it only keeps tenderness and empathy from coming in. ~ Glennon Doyle.
Hard work is important. So are play and unproductivity. My worth is tied not to my productivity but to my existence. I am worthy of rest. ~ Glennon Doyle.
You are here to decide if your life, relationships, and world are true and beautiful enough for you. ~ Glennon Doyle.
So these were the 173 inspiring Glennon Doyle quotes from the famous author of Untamed book.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Kamala Harris quotes and Hunter S. Thompson quotes.
