But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favourite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?
Elizabeth GilbertI felt like I was some kind of primitive spring-loaded machine, placed under far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing nearby. I imagined my body parts flying off my torso in order to escape the volcanic core of unhappiness that had become: me.
Elizabeth GilbertA lot of [erotica] was really interestingly disguised in the 19th-century as medical journals. So it would be in the voice of a learned doctor talking about somebody's pathologies. And then it would get really detailed. And then it would get really sweaty. And then you're like, "This isn't a doctor! I would like to see a degree, Mister!"
Elizabeth GilbertProblem is, you canโt accept that his relationship had a real short shelf life. Youโre like a dog at the dump, baby โ youโre just lickinโ at the empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if youโre not careful, that canโs gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it.โ โBut I love him.โ โSo love him.โ โBut I miss him.โ โSo miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it.
Elizabeth GilbertAs I got older, I discovered that nothing within me cried out for a baby. My womb did not seem to have come equipped with that famously ticking clock. Unlike so many of my friends, I did not ache with longing whenever I saw an infant. (Though I did ache with longing, it is true, whenever I saw a good used-book shop)
Elizabeth Gilbert