Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

Nobody could ever be like that bottomless well of a man—that walking confessional booth who could absorb whatever you told him without judgment or alarm. Nobody else could be that beautiful dark soul, who always seemed to straddle the worlds of life and death. Nobody but Frank was Frank

The thing that you don't understand about yourself, Vivian, is that you're not an interesting person. You are pretty, yes - but that's only because you are young. The prettiness will soon fade...What you are, Vivian, is a type of person. To be more specific, you are a type of woman. A tediously common type of woman.

This was simply not enough hours. This left far too many remaining hours free, and free hours were dangerous. Free hours created too much opportunity for examining the disappointments she was meant to be grinding under her boot heel.

I wanted to be all Gandhi about this. I wanted to be all Nelson Mandela about this. Not realizing at the time that both Gandhi and Mandela were lawyers.

We were taught to be dependable, responsible, the top of our classes at school, the most organized and efficient babysitters in town, the very miniature models of our hardworking farmer/nurse mother, a pair of junior Swiss Army knives, born to multitask.

I don't think that marriage means to suffer endlessly, in order to prove that you can honor a commitment. I don't think marriage is supposed to be an endurance contest.

Todo pasa. Con el tiempo todo pasa.

She loved it even more than ever, perhaps, because now, as an adult, she finally had the perspective to appreciate the value of her own joy.

You may want your work to be perfect, in other words; I just want mine to be finished.

As the saying goes: "Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them.

We are an increasingly depressed and anxious people—and not for nothing. Arguably, all these modern conveniences have been adopted to save us time. But time for what? Having created a system that tends to our every need without causing us undue exertion or labor, we can now fill these hours with . . . ?

Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes—but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work. Perfectionists

Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome. Your fear—programmed by evolution to be hypervigilant and insanely overprotective—will always assume that any uncertain outcome is destined to end in a bloody, horrible death. Basically, your fear is like a mall cop who thinks he's a Navy SEAL:

Getting out of a marriage is rough, though, and not just for the legal / financial complications or the massive lifestyle upheaval. (As my friend Deborah once advised me wisely: Nobody ever died from splitting up furniture.) It's the emotional recoil that kills you, the shock of stepping off the track of a conventional lifestyle and losing all the embracing comforts that keep so many people on that track forever.

We need courage to take ourselves seriously, to look closely and without flinching, to regard the things that frighten us in life and art with wonder.

And you have treasures hidden within you—extraordinary treasures—and so do I, and so does everyone around us. And bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion, and the clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small.

His penmanship was shamefully crabbed. Each sentence was a crowded village of capital letters and small letters, living side by side in tight misery, crawling up on one another as though trying to escape the page.

Creative living is a path for the brave. a

That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change.

Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.

But this morning in meditation, after I heard the lion roar YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW STRONG MY LOVE IS, I came out of that meditation cave like worrior queen.

In any case, our love is not a typical love, as is typically felt between men and women. We share something else between us - something more immediate, more cherishing. That has been evident to me from the beginning, and I pray it has been evident to you. My wish is that we two could live together as one, both contented and elevated, and ever-seeking.

I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it - I will love you through that, as well. If you don't need the medication, I will love you, too. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.