Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

An unchecked ego is what the Buddhists call "a hungry ghost"—forever famished, eternally howling with need and greed.

The sentences still form in my mind, and thoughts still do their little show-off dance, but I know my thought patterns so well now that they don't bother me anymore. My thoughts have become like old neighbors, kind of bothersome but ultimately rather endearing—Mr. and Mrs. Yakkity-Yak and their three dumb children, Blah, Blah and Blah. But they don't agitate my home. There's room for all of us in this neighborhood.

It took me many years to become an honest person, and I know why: because the truth is often terrifying. Once you introduce truth into a room, the room may never be the same again.

Guilt is just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking you're making moral progress. - Vivian

I want to live in a world full of explorers and generous souls rather than people who have voluntarily become prisoners of their own fortresses. I want to live in a world full of people who look into each other's faces along the path of life and ask, "Who are you my friend and how can we serve each other?

It's only that I've waited so long to grow up, but now there's nothing worth growing up for.

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

But there is one critical gift that a traditional Hmong bride almost always receives on her wedding day which all too often eludes the modern Western bride, and that is the gift of certainty. When you have only one path set before you, you can generally feel confident that it was the correct path to have taken. And a bride whose expectations for happiness are kept necessarily low to begin with is more protected, perhaps, from the risk of devastating disappointments down the road.

I was inspired by the example of my parents and by Walt Whitman's stirring advice to American boys of the nineteenth century: "Ascend no longer from the textbook! Ascend to your own country! Go to the West and the South! Go among men, in the spirit of men! Master horses, become a good marksman and a strong oarsman . . .

women all seemed to be living in constant service to their husbands. (They either served their men happily or with resentment—but they all served.)

But this is a city that gets born anew in the fresh eyes of every young person who arrives here for the first time. So that city, that place—newly created for my eyes only—will never exist again. It is preserved forever in my memory like an orchid trapped in a paperweight. That city will always be my perfect New York. You can have your perfect New York, and other people can have theirs—but that one will always be mine. —

one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation. 26 Ihad shipped ahead a box of books to myself, right before I left New York to move to Italy.

There's a hole in our world from all the art those people did not make—there is a hole in us from the loss of their work—and I cannot imagine this was ever anyone's divine plan.

The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels—that's creative living. The courage to go on that hunt in the first place—that's what separates a mundane existence from a more enchanted one. The often surprising results of that hunt—that's what I call Big Magic.

But nothing advanced into the realm of what you might call true love. Maybe I just wasn't looking for it. Or maybe I was being spared from it. Nothing will uproot your life more violently than true love—at least as far as I've always witnessed.

How do I know? How does anyone know? It's all so wildly subjective, and, anyhow, life has surprised me too many times in this realm. On one hand, I've known brilliant people who created absolutely nothing from their talents. On the other hand, there are people whom I once arrogantly dismissed who later staggered me with the gravity and beauty of their work. It has all humbled me far beyond the ability to judge anyone's potential, or to rule anybody out.

I did believe that my behavior made me unusual—because it didn't seem to match the behavior of other women—but I didn't

My old man also said this about Martha Knox: "She's not beautiful, but I think she knows how to sell it." Well, it's true that I wanted to hold her braid. I always had wanted to from first seeing it and mostly I wanted to in that dance, but I didn't reach for it and I didn't set down my beer bottle. Martha Knox wasn't selling anything. We didn't dance again that night or again at all, because

For some reason, I feel the same way about you that I felt about my kids when they were small - that it wasn't their job to love me, it was my job to love them. You can decide to feel however you want to, but I love you and I will always love you.

when women are gathered together with no men around, they don't have to be anything in particular; they can just be.

The word Guru is composed of two Sanskrit syllables. The first means "darkness," the second means "light." Out of the darkness and into the light.

Creative entitlement doesn't mean behaving like a princess, or acting as though the world owes you anything whatsoever. No, creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that—merely by being here—you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own. The

It's okay if your work is fun for you, is what I'm saying. It's also okay if your work is healing for you, or fascinating for you, or redemptive for you, or if it's maybe just a hobby that keeps you from going crazy. It's even okay if your work is totally frivolous. That's allowed. It's all allowed.

if you wish to live a contented creative life, goes something like this: "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).