Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

Psychologists suggest that we must reach back at least three generations to look for clues whenever we begin untangling the emotional legacy of any one family's history.

I agree--the world isn't a nursery. But the very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why you sometimes must reach out of its jurisdiction for help, appealing to a higher authority in order to find your comfort. (53)

I want to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. It was only later, after admitting this dream, that I noticed the happy coincidence that all these countries begin with the letter I. A fairly auspicious sign, it seemed, on a voyage of self-discovery.

Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth reading Edward Gibbon?

As Joan Didion said, "I don't know what I think until I write about it.

The Buddha referred to married people as "householders." He even gave clear instructions as to how one should be a good householder: Be nice to your spouse, be honest, be faithful, give alms to the poor, buy some insurance against fire and flood . . . I'm dead serious: The Buddha literally advised married couples to buy property insurance.

The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm.

When the dust has settled years later, we might ask ourselves, "What was I thinking?" and the answer is usually: You weren't. Psychologists call that state of deluded madness "narcissistic love." I call it "my twenties.

But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.

The last line of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante is faced with the vision of God Himself, is a sentiment that is still easily understandable by anyone familiar with so-called modern Italian. Dante writes that God is not merely a blinding vision of glorious light, but that He is, most of all, l'amour che move il sole e l'altre stelle...'The love that moves the sun and the other stars.

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 a few feet 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 you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.

If faith were rational , it wouldn't be -by definition- faith.

When I refer to creative living, I am speaking more broadly. I'm talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.

I firmly believe that we all need to find something to do in our lives that stops us from eating the couch.

I'm choosing happiness over suffering.

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

Gratitude, always. Always, gratitude.

If you can't do what you long to do, go do something else. Go walk the dog, go pick up every bit of trash on the street outside your home, go walk the dog again, go bake a peach cobbler, go paint some pebbles with brightly colored nail polish and put them in a pile. You might think it's procrastiantion, but - with the right intention - it isn't; it's motion. And any motion whatsoever beats inertia, because inspiration will always be drawn to motion.

I would say that if you really want to STOP knowing someone, you have to divorce him.

You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others.")

Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.

I believe that many modern women, my mother included, carry within them a whole secret New England cemetery, wherein they have quietly buried- in neat little rows- the personal dreams they have given up for their families

One of these poems I wrote after having been here only a month. The other, I wrote this morning. In the space between the two poems, I have found acres of grace

There is a hardly a more gracious gift that we can offer somebody than to accept them fully, to love them almost despite themselves.