Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

So the question is not so much What are you passionate about? The question is What are you passionate enough about that you can endure even the most disagreeable aspects of the work.

Si a Dios lo llaman presencia es por algo: Dios está aquí ahora mismo. El lugar para hallarlo es el presente y el momento es ahora.

Or, as Sextus, the ancient Pythagorian philosopher, said, The wise man is always similar to himself. -

Some people like to argue about God." "Not necessary," he said. "I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion.

It could take me a whole year just to finish one tiny short story. Most of the time, all I was doing was imitating my favorite authors, anyhow. I went through a Hemingway stage (who doesn't?), but I also went through a pretty serious Annie Proulx stage and a rather embarrassing Cormac McCarthy stage. But that's what you have to do at the beginning; everybody imitates before they can innovate.

I never could act, Edna. And I detest Hamlet. Have you ever seen a production of Hamlet that didn't make you want to go home and put your head in the oven? I haven't. Oh, I thought our Hamlet was quite nice, said Edna. Because it was abridged, said Peg. Which is the only thing Shakespear should ever be.

To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have 4 legs instead of 2. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.

If you don't have a clear passion and somebody blithely tells you to go follow your passion, I think you have the right to give that person the middle finger.

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.

The chickens look so plump and contented even in death that you imagine they offered themselves up for sacrifice proudly, after competing among themselves in life to see who could become the moistest and the fattest.

La gente cree que un alma gemela es la persona con la que encajas perfectamente, que es lo que quiere todo el mundo. Pero un alma gemela auténtica es un espejo, es la persona que te saca todo lo que tienes reprimido, que te hace volver la mirada hacia dentro para que puedas cambiar tu vida. Una verdadera alma gemela es, seguramente, la persona mas importante que vayas a conocer en tu vida, porque te tira abajo todos los muros y te despierta de un porrazo.

I'm damn sure not going to rent a place—what am I, an immigrant?

I also want to live the most vividly decorated temporary life that I can. I don't just mean physically; I mean emotionally, spiritually, intellectually.

This is what I've found about life, as I've gotten older: you start to lose people. It's not that there is ever a shortage of people--oh, heavens no. It is merely that--as the years pass--there comes to be a terrible shortage of YOUR people. The ones YOU loved. The ones who knew the people that you BOTH loved. The ones who know your whole history.

En mi destino hay muchas cosas que se me escapan, pero hay otras que sí están bajo mi jurisdicción. Hay una serie de billetes de lotería que puedo comprar, aumentando mis posibilidades de llegar a ser feliz.

That's right, you never cared about money, Billy, Olive said. Certainly not to the extent that those of us who forgot to be born into wealthy families care about it.

If you clear out all that space in your mind that you're using right now to obsess about this guy, you'll have a vacuum there, an open spot—a doorway. And guess what the universe will do with that doorway? It will rush in—God will rush in—and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed.

Your own reasons to create are reason enough.

If you dare to create something and put it out there, after all, then it may accidentally stir up a response. That's the natural order of life: the eternal inhale and exhale of action and reaction. But you are definitely not in charge of the reaction—even when that reaction is flat-out bizarre.

History has a pulse, they say - but mostly I have never been able to hear it, not even when it is drumming right in my goddamn ears.

For me, at the age of twenty-five, to hear a ninety-year-old widow speak of having her life changed by passion (and so recently!) was a revelation. It was one of those moments where I could almost feel my perspective expanding, as if my mind were being ratcheted open several notches and was now welcoming in all sorts of new possibilities for what a woman's life could look like.

No hay ciudad que pueda vivir pacíficamente, sean cuales sean sus leyes», escribió Platón, «si sus habitantes sólo saben divertirse y beber y consumirse en la práctica del amor».

Debes dejar de mirar el mundo con la mente. Tienes que mirarlo con el corazón. Así llegarás a conocer a Dios.

I'm not sure anybody out there really knows what they're doing. Apparently not