Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

He seemed to live in a state of uninterrupted marvel, and he encouraged them to do the same. He didn't so much teach them how to write poetry, they said, but why: because of delight. Because of stubborn gladness. He told them that they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of this world.

Maybe you grew up in an environment where people just sat around watching TV and waiting for stuff to happen to them.

Lo único que me parecía tan impensable como irme era quedarme. No quería destrozar nada ni a nadie. Sólo quería marcharme silenciosamente por la puerta de atrás, sin discusiones ni secuelas, y no parar de correr hasta llegar a Groenlandia.

Then I walk back over the bridge, through the old Jewish ghetto

If there is one word, by the way, that triggers all the inherent terrors I have ever felt about the institution of marriage, it is coverture. This is exactly what the dancer Isadora Duncan was talking about when she wrote that "any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract and then goes into it deserves all the consequences.

Sometimes I think that the difference between a tormented creative life and a tranquil creative life is nothing more than the difference between the word awful and the word interesting. Interesting outcomes, after all, are just awful outcomes with the volume of drama turned way down.

I know every inch of fear, from head to toe.

But the thing about divorcing someone is that you kind of stop listening to all the mean stuff they say about you after a while.)

Let inspiration lead you wherever it wants to lead you. Keep in mind that for most of history people just made things, and they didn't make such a big freaking deal out of it.

But Alma thought it would kill her, this profundity of sorrow. She could not sound out the bottom of it. She had been sinking into it for a year and a half, and feared she would sink forevermore. She cried herself out on Hanneke's neck, sobbing forth the harvest of her long-darkened spirits. She must have poured a tankard of tears down Hanneke's bosom, but Hanneke did not move or speak, except to repeat, "There, there, child. It will not kill you.

There is no time or space where inspiration comes from—and also no competition, no ego, no limitations. There is only the stubbornness of the idea itself, refusing to stop searching until it has found an equally stubborn collaborator. (Or multiple collaborators, as the case may be.) Work with that stubbornness. Work with it as openly and trustingly and diligently as you can.

Then he said, "Strange…," which is something you never want to hear from either your palm-reader or your dentist.

Accompanying this nineteen-year-old virgin to New York City were two large suitcases- one filled with my clothes, all folded neatly in tissue, and the other packed with fabrics, trimmings, and sewing supplies, so that I could make more clothes (8).

One must bear what cannot be escaped," she told Alma, as she rubbed clean her face. "You will not die of your grief—no more than the rest of us ever have.

In other words: I can either live a drama or I can invent a drama—but I do not have the capacity to do both at the same time.

they quit as soon as things aren't easy anymore, as soon as it gets painful, or boring, or agitating. They quit as soon as they see something in their minds that scares them or hurts them. So they miss the good part, the wild part, the transformative part—the part when you push past the difficulty and enter into some raw new unexplored universe within yourself.

My earliest memories are of fear, as are pretty much all the memories that come after my earliest memories.

And why must Prudence go so far out of her way to make everyone around her look so paltry-hearted and piggish, in comparison to her own mighty sacrifices?

So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.

It's the emotional recoil that kills you, the shock of stepping off the track of a conventional lifestyle and losing all the embracing comforts that keep so many people on that track forever.

Anyway, I arrived in New York City safely- a girl so freshly hatched that there was practically yolk in my hair (13).

Multiple discovery even happens in romantic relationships. Nobody's been interested in you for years and years, and suddenly you have two suitors at the same time? That's multiple discovery, indeed!

My desire to work—my desire to engage with my creativity as intimately and as freely as possible—is my strongest personal incentive to fight back against pain, by any means necessary, and to fashion a life for myself that is as sane and healthy and stable as it can possibly be.

Then you made an expensive error.