Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

He said, Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But both are equally true.

The continent did not appeal: France was filled with irritating people; Spain was corrupt and unstable; Russia, impossible; Italy, absurd; Germany, rigid; Portugal, in decline. Holland, thought favorably disposed toward him, was dull. The United States of America, he decided, was a possibility.

Struggle explained everything.

She did not need a library; she was a library.

Over time, I've found the right tone of voice for these assertions, too. It's best to be insistent, but affable. Repeat yourself, but don't get shrill. Speak to your darkest and most negative interior voices the way a hostage negotiator speaks to a violent psychopath: calmly, but firmly. Most of all, never back down. You cannot afford to back down. The life you are negotiating to save, after all, is your own.

The thing about fashion, my dears, is that you don't need to follow it, no matter what they say. No fashion trend is compulsory, remember—and if you dress too much in the style of the moment, it makes you look like a nervous person. Paris is all well and good, but we can't just follow Paris for the sake of Paris, now can we?

Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.

Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all.

NO ONE KNOWS COCO, MY DEAR. SHE WOULD NEVER ALLOW FOR THAT.

to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. a

Yet I can tell you that there was a lonely and untenanted corner of my heart that I'd never known was there—and Frank moved right into it. Holding him in my heart made me feel like I belonged to love itself. Although we never lived together or shared a bed, he was always a part of me. I saved stories for him all week, so I would have good things to tell him. I asked for his opinions, because I respected his ethics.

Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.

Her sadness was ceaseless, but she kept it quarantined in a governable little quarter of her heart. It was the best she could do.

My creative expression must be the most important thing in the world to me (if I am to live artistically), and it also must not matter at all (if I am to live sanely).

Plant an expectation; reap a disappointment.

the Upanishads suggest that so-called chaos may have an actual divine function, even if you personally can't recognize it right now: The best we can do, then, in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally-no matter what insanity is transpiring out there.

the flying fish and the diving bird had been netted.

must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart. The

Back off, Jack-I got four brothers protecting my ass,' and I just rode on by him

You are worthy, dear one, regardless of the outcome. You will keep making your work, regardless of the outcome. You will keep sharing your work, regardless of the outcome. You were born to create, regardless of the outcome. You will never lose trust in the creative process, even when you don't understand the outcome." There

She remembered a line from Montaigne, something she had read years ago, which had always stayed with her, and which now felt horribly pertinent: "These are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.

Atš?ir?b? no daudz?m draudzen?m es nejutu nek?das s?p?gas ilgas, ieraugot mazu b?rnu. (Tiesa, es jutu s?p?gas ilgas, ieraugot labu lietoto gr?matu veikalu.)

I was struck - not for the first time in my years of travel - by how isolating contemporary American society can seem by comparison. Where I came from, we have shriveled down the notion of what constitutes 'a family unit' to such a tiny scale that it would probably be unrecognizable as a family to anybody in one of these big, loose, enveloping Hmong clans. You almost need an electron microscope to study the modern Western family these days.

It was during the war, too, that I learned how to be comfortable sitting alone in a bar or restaurant. For many women, this is a strangely difficult thing to do, but eventually I mastered it. (The trick is to bring a book or newspaper, to ask for the best table nearest to the window, and to order your drink just as soon as you sit down.) Once I got the hang of it, I found that eating alone by the window in a quiert restaurant is one of life's greatest secret pleasures.