Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

Done is better than good.

Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one....This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype- the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, but who cannot relax.

The Bhagavad Gita—that ancient Indian Yogic text—says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.

Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistuinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. How do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody—so utterly well known and so thoroughly ever-present that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air?

If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian...I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.

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?' Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.

I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity.

So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?

We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentment and mortality.

It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too.

This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.

Go back to bed', said the omniscient interior voice, because you don't need to know the final answer right now, at three o'clock in the morning on the Thursday in November. 'Go back to bed', because I love you. 'Go back to bed', beacause the only thing you need to do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer.

I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.

every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimatesecrets of your marriage.

Anyhow, the older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I'm far more moved by authenticity. Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me.

The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, Let go.

There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.

You have no idea how strong my love is!

You make some big grandoise decision about what you need to do, or who you need to be, and then circumstances arise that immediately reveal to you how little you understood about yourself.

Italian men are like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.

It's a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at.

Groceries, you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control. Drop everything else but that. Because if you can't learn to master your thinking, you're in deep trouble forever.

What if we just acknowledged that we have a bad relationship, and we stuck it out, anyway? What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we can't live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together -- in misery, but happy to not be apart.