Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

You have the opposite of poker face. You have like.. miniature golf face.

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

I think another way that you can really harm yourself as an artist is by buying into the mythology that it's really important.

I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check.

The nineteenth century was the last moment in history when a relatively educated layperson could follow what was going on in the world of science and invention to a wide degree. Also, there were no "professionals". This was a time when amateur explorers, naturalists and enthusiasts were are still making major contributions to progress.

As 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)

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

If you're going to answer the call and you're going to transform and you're going to change, get ready. It is not a day at the beach.

I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.

Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.

longing to travel while you are already traveling is, I admit, a kind of greedy madness

Men go into marriage with virtually no expectations whatsoever. Ten years later, the men are delightfully surprised to find out that it's actually kind of nice, and the women have sort of had to take a nose dive from what they thought it was going to be.

the number 108 is held to be the most auspicious, a perfect three-digit multiple of three, its components adding up to 9, which is three threes. And 3, of course, is the number representing supreme balance.

The mosquitoes here are big enough to rape a chicken.

The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn't want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.

Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying","We understand how it is - we have one, too.

Once Henry had heard a crying noise at sea, and had seen a mermaid floating on the ocean's surface. The mermaid had been injured by a shark. Henry had pulled the mermaid out of the water with a rope, and she had died in his arms..."what language did the mermaid speak?" Alma wanted to know, imagining that it like almost have to be Greek. "English!" Henry said. "By God, plum, why would I rescue a deuced foreign mermaid?

Well, I always tried to look nice and be feminine even in the worst tragedies and crisis, there's no reason to add to everyone's misery by looking miserable yourself. That's my philosophy. This is why I always wore makeup and jewelry into the jungle-nothing too extravagant, but maybe just a nice gold bracelet and some earrings, a little lipstick, good perfume. Just enough to show that I still had my self-respect.

I'm trying to dismantle a stereotype that in order to live any kind of creative life, you have to be in torment and suffering. We're addicted to this idea because it makes for good bio pics... but I actually think it's better to live a life where you're constantly exploring your curiosity and creativity.

The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not.

Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

To show a longing for anything that one cannot have, for instance, is not a clever position.

But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome - people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.

When a man who looks like Yoda hands you a prophecy, you have to respond.

I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn't wake him to share in my distress.

We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we are afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.

When I diagnose my depression now, I think it was partially about saying goodbye to these kids that I always expected to have but already knew that I wouldn't.

I believe in miracles, I believe in the Law of Attraction, but even I don't think I'm big enough to manifest five Asian elephants cloaked in gold.

And then, in that regal silence, finally - I began to meditate on (and with) God.

The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, Let go.

Being a woman did not look enviable to me, even when it looked admirable. It looked like nonstop sacrifice and service. Because it was. Being a woman seemed vulnerable and sad. Even the strong women I knew - and they were all strong - had earned their strength through enduring huge disappointments and tremendous struggles.

My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: "I want a spiritual teacher.

This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.

When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.

Devotion is diligence without assurance

Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself.

Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, men of science were all believers. Most of the great early English naturalists were also ministers; they were the only ones who had education and leisure for such pursuits. Darwin himself almost became a minister. God's power was always thought to be most easily and obviously revealed in the majestic works of nature.

Every day when you wake up, ask yourself, 'What do I really, really, really want? ' You have to say really, really, really, otherwise you won't believe it.

I myself have never been enchanted by the dream of the white wedding, and, heaven help us, the expectation that this exquisitely catered event should be 'the happiest moment' of one's life.

If Todd [Willingham] was guilty of anything, it was just his self-preservation. He got up and ran out of the house and then thought about the children after the fact.

When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.

I completely respect the ways people are bound in the lives that they have, whether it's because of forces outside of their control or choices that they've made that they want to honor with their own responsibilities and obligations - taking care of people around them or being a part of a community, or their work.

I think a lot of people who feel as though they desperately want to be married oftentimes simply desperately want to have a wedding.

You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here.

There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.

We live in this society where you must constantly be reinventing yourself. The big question is what are you doing next. The only thing they want is composed of these three elements: They want you to do it the exact same way because they want more of it; but they want it to be totally different; and they want it to be better. That's all you have to do. You just have to do something that's exactly the same, totally different, and better.