Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

We stared at each other for a while. There was a good deal of information conveyed across the silence, a whole conversation, you might say. This is waht flirtation is in its purest form, a conversation held without words. Flirtation is a series of silent questions that one person asks another person with their eyes. And the answer to those questions is always the same word: Maybe.

But if you don't have the courage, let's try to get you some. Because creative living is a path for the brave. We all know this. And we all know that when courage dies, creativity dies with it. We all know that fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun. This is common knowledge; sometimes we just don't know what to do about it.

Un día de éstos vas a recordar esta época de tu vida como un dulce momento de tristeza. Entenderás que, estando "de duelo y teniendo roto el corazón, estás en el mejor sitio posible para cambiar tu vida. En un hermoso lugar dedicado a la devoción y en un estado de gracia. Vive este momento minuto a minuto. Deja que las cosas se arreglen solas

I don't know exactly what I am, but I am curious enough to go find out!

There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?

He came bearing not a sword but a candle.

You start whenever you decide to start.

Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana… "From the center of my life, there came a great fountain…

Stop treating your creativity like it's a tired, old, unhappy marriage (a grind, a drag) and start regarding it with the fresh eyes of a passionate lover. Even if you have only fifteen minutes a day in a stairwell alone with your creativity, take it. Go hide in that stairwell and make out with your art.

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.

Do whatever brings you to life, then.

I climbed the stairs to my apartment, lay down in my new bed and turned off the light. I waited to start crying or worrying

This proclamation of intent and entitlement is not something you can do just once and then expect miracles; it's something you must do daily, forever.

Venice seems like a wonderful city in which to die a slow and alcoholic death, or to lose a loved one, or to lose the murder weapon with which the loved one was lost in the first place.

One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not.

Only through constant focus can you become independent. Only through independence can you know yourself. And only through knowing yourself will you be able to ask the key question of your life: What is is that I am destined to accomplish, and how can I make it happen?

It was the Senator's opinion that a good, peppery chicken soup could cure anything, even childbirth, so he cooked up a nice batch for Stanley Thomas's wife.

Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart. The kundalini shakti - the supreme energy of the divine - will take you there.

I saw the apartment almost as a sanatorium, a hospice clinic for my own recovery. I painted the walls in the warmest colors I could find and bought myself flowers every week, as if I were visiting myself in the hospital.

Because either way, it's all kind of amazing—what we get to do, what we get to attempt, what we sometimes get to commune with.

The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying. We

With death, all suffering would end. Doubt would end. Shame and guilt would end. All her questions would end. Memory—most mercifully of all—would end. She could quietly excuse herself from life.

But if your calling is to make things, then you still have to make things in order to live out your highest creative potential—and also in order to remain sane.

Boris Pasternak described this phenomenon beautifully, when he wrote, "No genuine book has a first page.