I was a writer before 'Eat, Pray, Love,' and I'll be a writer after it's over. It's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

There is a reason they call God a presence - because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time.

Nothing is so essential as dignity…Time will reveal who has it and who has it not.

Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it's not something where-if you missed it by age 19-you're finished. It's never too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world-at any age. At least try.

meditation vs prayer = listening vs talking

[Italian men] are like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.

For most of Western civilization there was no real division between the realms of science, divinity, and artistic endeavor - they were just three strands of the same braid, all of them pulling toward the same beautiful desire: to try to understand the workings of this curious and beautiful world. There were many people who would have called themselves all three things at once: men of god, men of science, men of the arts.