Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

What kind of God do you believe in? my answer is easy: I believe in a magnificent God

My fear wasn't some kind of rare artisanal object; it was just a mass-produced item, available on the shelves of any generic box store.

Honey -- even Ray Charles can see that you have control issues.

Now, I cannot imagine where women ever got the idea that they must be perfect in order to be loved or successful. (Ha ha ha! Just kidding! I can totally imagine: We got it from every single message society has ever sent us! Thanks, all of human history!)

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

I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed - much closer than we imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. I respond with gratitude to anyone who has ever voyaged to the center of that heart, and who has then returned to the world with a report for the rest of us that God is an experience of supreme love.

They loved each other, she realized. They loved each other, because they knew each other.

Love over suffering, always.

If inspiration is allowed to unexpectedly enter you, it is also allowed to unexpectedly exit you.

The search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order. In the search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult. You are abandoning your comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope!) that something greater will be offered you in return for what you have given up.

Sometimes it's just true that other people have better ideas for your life than you do.

We had more fun waiting in line together at the Department of Motor Vehicles than most couples have on their honeymoons. We gave each other same nickname, so there would be no separation between us. We made goals, vows, promises and dinner together. He read books to me...

Raising a child is the very definition of ambivalence. I am overwhelmed at times by how something can simultaneously be so awful and so rewarding.

Of course nobody is required to stand in the field of honor...If you find it too challenging, you may always exit, and then you can remain a child. But if you wish to be a person of character, I'm afraid this is the only way. But it may be painful.

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.

The earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves.

What's more, I believe in argument and I even love it. Argument is our most steadfast pathway toward truth, for it is the only proven arbalest against superstitious thinking, or lackadaisical axioms.

The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe: 1. To have been born a human being, capable of concious inquiry. 2. To have been born - or to have developed - a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. 3. To have found a living spiritual master.

What you absolutely must not do is turn around and walk out. Otherwise, you will miss the party, and that would be a pity, because—please believe me—we did not come all this great distance, and make all this great effort, only to miss the party at the last moment.

You don't have to live like this because people tell you it's the only way. You're not handcuffed to your culture!

I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker," he continued, as though he had not heard her. "We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and it grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us, more than anything.

The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.

Then, I will be a real Italian girl, instead of a total American who still can't hear someone across the street to his friend Marco without wanting instinctively to yell back Polo!

Wanting to get married, for me, is all about a desire to feel chosen." She went on to write that while the concept of building a life together with another adult was appealing, what really pulled at her heart was the desire for a wedding, a public event "that will unequivocally prove to everyone, especially to myself, that I am precious enough to have been selected by somebody forever.