My love affair with (him) had a wonderful element of romance to it, which I will always cherish. But it was not an infatuation, and hereโs how I can tell: because I did not demand that he become my Great Emancipator or my Source of All Life, nor did I immediately vanish into that manโs chest cavity like a twisted, unrecognizable, parasitical homonculus. During our long period of courtship, I remained intact within my own personality, and I allowed myself to meet (him) for who he was.
Elizabeth GilbertAbsolute certainty is not something I strive for anymore. I've learned the hard way that destiny usually looks upon our most strident convictions with amusement, or perhaps even pity.
Elizabeth GilbertCreativity is a scavenger hunt. It's your obligation to pay attention to clues, to the thing that gives you that little tweak.
Elizabeth GilbertMarriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistuinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. How do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebodyโso utterly well known and so thoroughly ever-present that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air?
Elizabeth GilbertThe notion is that human beings are born, (as my Guru has explained many times,) with equivalent potential for both contraction and expansion. The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us, and then it's up to the individual (or the family, or the society) to decide what will be brought forth - the virtues or the malevolence. The madness of this planet is largely a result of human being's difficulty in coming into virtuous balance with himself. Lunacy (both collective and individual) results.
Elizabeth Gilbert