Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

I am not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me? I am in desperate need of help. I don't know what to do. I need an answer. Please tell me what to do...

We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character.

I said, It seems like you have fond feelings towrd your ex-wife. Are you two still close? Nah, he said casually. She thinks I changed my name to motherfucker.

Who will ever kiss this encyclopedia of a head?

Mostly you meet friends when traveling by accident, like by sitting next to them on the train, or in a restaurant, or in a holding cell.

Traveling-to-a-place energy and living-in-a-place energy are two fundamentally different energies

But I love him. So love him. But I miss him. So miss him. Send him love and light every time you think about him, and then drop it.

This was my voice, but perfectly wise, calm and compassionate. This was what my voice would sound like if I'd only ever experienced love and certainty in my life. How can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine?

My soul, when I tend to it, is a far more expansive and fascinating source of guidance than my ego will ever be, because my soul desires only one thing: wonder. And since creativity is my most efficient pathway to wonder, I take refuge there, and it feeds my soul, and it quiets the hungry ghost—thereby saving me from the most dangerous aspect of myself.

I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and all I reaped for my trouble was a harvest of bitter fruit.

Ketut, why is life all crazy like this? I asked my medicine man the next day...So what can we do about the craziness of the world? Nothing. Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. This is nature of world. This is destiny. Worry about your craziness only-make you in peace.

But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else's blessing (or even their comprehension) in order to make your own creative work.

It's so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it's been polluted.

It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated.

If something is rubbing so hard against you, you can be sure it's working on you.

A parent is inexcusable who does not personally teach her child to think.

As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift-or curse, perhaps-of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day.

But why must everything have a practical application? I'd been such a diligent soldier for years - working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now?

Still it is true that many same-sex couples want nothing more than to join society as fully integrated socially responsible family-centered taxpaying Little League-coaching nation-serving respectably married citizens. So why not welcome them in Why not recruit them by the vanload to sweep in on heroic wings and save the flagging and battered old institution of matrimony from a bunch of apathetic ne'er-do-well heterosexual deadbeats like me

True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer.

Not many people know how to be satisfied.

There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint,'Dear saint-please, please, please...give me the grace to win the lottery.' This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated statue come to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust,'My son-please, please, please...buy a ticket.

David was catnip and kryptonite to me.

Most of humanity, he said, have eyes that are so caked shut with the dust of deception they will never see the truth, no matter who tries to help them.