Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

That's what we're all sort of trying to do in our lives - to make the simplest things work out the best.

I've read that under trauma, that you have this ability to kind of disconnect from the experience.

I spent a week living as a man. Which was actually, I'm sorry to say, embarrassingly easy for me to do.

I think that if you can roast a chicken, you can get whatever you want out of a woman.

To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balancedlife.

Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing...

The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying the only thing more impossible than stayin the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.g was leaving.

Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love it's more like love's shady second cousin who's always borrowing money and can't hold down a job.

The Bhagavad Gita--that ancient Indian Yogic text--says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.

It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away.

You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian...I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.

Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all.

Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.

I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work …

Religion is for those who don't want to go to hell, and spirituality is for those who have already been there.

As the saying goes, "Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them." Why would I want to keep my limitations?

Fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun.

I am touched that you are trying to comprehend me. A friend could not be more loving.

Marriage is a game. They (the anxious and powerful) set the rules. We (the ordinary and subversive) bow obediently before those rules. And then we go home and do whatever the hell we want anyhow.

The emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end, after many years of partnership.

... "The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world, " says an old Buddhist teaching. In other words: Get used to it.

Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to bring forth this work? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes." (quoting Jack Gilbert)

[C]reative living is a path for the brave.

There’s this human capacity for joy and endurance, even when things are at their worst. A joy that occurs not despite our suffering, but within it.

I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady.

... you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead.

Devo farmi le ossa is how they say it in Italian. “I need to make my bones.

If you don't learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you'll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting.

A good-enough novel violently written now is better than a perfect novel meticulously written never.

[There is a] quiet glory [in] merely making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations.

Creativity is a crushing chore and a glorious mystery. The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.

And at the end of your days, you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence.

Work with all your heart, because - I promise - if you show up for your work day after day after day after day. you just might get lucky enough some random morning to burst into bloom.

We are all walking repositories of hidden treasures.

It might have been done before, but it hasn’t been done by you!

It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case if that I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something

Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into the realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome.

You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures

Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, however, something to be dealt with.

I have never created anything in my life that did not make me feel, at some point or another, like I was the guy who just walked into a fancy ball wearing a homemade lobster costume.

Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.

Do what you love to do, and do it with both seriousness and lightness. At least then you will know that you have tried and that--whatever the outcome--you have traveled a noble path.

We are all just beginners here, and we shall all die beginners.

I was doing something I'd never done before. And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot yet do today?

... most of my prayers are expressions of sheer gratitude for the fullness of my contentment.

At no moment in history has a bright young girl with plenty of food and a good constitution perished from too much learning.

To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver.

To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.