Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

I believe that our creativity grows like sidewalk weeds out of the cracks between our pathologies—not from the pathologies themselves.

Ann has a preternatural ability to render herself very small—nearly invisible—in order to better observe the world around her in safe anonymity, so that she can write about it, unnoticed. In other words, her superpower is to conceal her superpowers.

You must learn in life to take things more lightly, my dear. The world is always changing. Learn how to allow for it. Someone makes a promise, and then they break it.

And the question now for me is, What are my choices to be? What do I believe that I deserve in this life? Where can I accept sacrifice, and where can I not?

Watch for the people whose eyes light up when you talk about your dream. Those are the people you keep.

don't have to be anything in particular; they can just be.

of the 1950s. It was on the rooftop of our little bridal boutique that I learned this truth: when women are gathered together with no men around, they don't have to be anything in particular; they can just be.

Wendell Berry warned, "To attribute to the Muse a special fondness for pain is to come too close to desiring and cultivating pain.

There will be two ships sailing, but you'll be on the Resolution, with Cook himself. Never put yourself in his way. Never speak to him. And if you do speak to him, which you must never do, certainly do to speak to him in the manner in which you have sometimes spoken to me. He will not find it as diverting as I do.

both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish...

Anyway, I arrived in New York City safely- a girl so freshly hatched that there was practically yolk in my hair.

Pero ese amor que has sentido no es más que el comienzo. Casi ni lo has probado. Es sólo amor mortal, cutre y chapucero.Ya verás como eres capaz de amar mucho más profundamente. Diablos, Zampa, que un día llegarás a querer al mundo entero. Ese es tu destino. No te rías.

I think people have children for all manner of reasons- sometimes out of a pure desire to nurture and witness life, sometimes out of an absence of choice, sometimes in order to hold on to a partner or create an heir, sometimes without thinking about it in any particular way. Not all the reasons to have children are the same, and not all of them are necessarily unselfish. Not all the reasons not to have children are the same, either, though. Not are all those reasons necessarily selfish.

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's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

Every time a diminishing thought arises, I repeat the vow I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore.

I recently read a fabulous blog by a writer named Mark Manson, who said that the secret to finding your purpose in life is to answer this question in total honesty: "What's your favorite flavor of shit sandwich?

This scene would have been even more awkward than it sounds, except that eventually I got distracted by my own reflection in the train window, and that kept me busy for a good long while. (Forgive me, Angela, but being captivated by your own appearance is part of what it means to be a young and pretty girl.)

People convince themselves that they have been robbed when they have not, in fact, been robbed. Such thinking comes from a wretched allegiance to the notion of scarcity - from the belief that the world is a place of dearth, and that there will never be enough of anything to go around.

I don't want to be married anymore. I was trying so hard not to know this, but the truth kept insisting itself to me.

I cross over the river to Trastevere

One wouldn't have noticed it before, but now it was obvious. It was as though Ambrose had opened an inlet to something previously invisible, and Alma could finally see a truth she would otherwise have been blind to forever.

También sé que no voy a tener hijos sólo para no arrepentirme de no haberlos tenido; no me parece un motivo suficiente para traer más niños a este mundo. Aunque supongo que habrá gente que se reproduzca por eso, como una especie de seguro contra el arrepentimiento futuro.

I'm with the British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on this point, when he observes: "If the art legitimates cruelty, I think the art is not worth having.

How did they let the world get so out of control?" "I don't know, honey. But I'm not sure anybody out there really knows what they're doing.