Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

She wrote, "The greater the crisis, it seems, the swifter the evolution." She wrote, "All transformation appears to be motivated by desperation and emergency." She

I think it's far more honorable to stay in the game - even if you're objectively losing the game - than to excuse yourself from participation because of your delicate sensibilities.

really pulled at her heart was the desire for a wedding, a public event "that will unequivocally prove to everyone, especially to myself, that I am precious enough to have been selected by somebody forever.

nature, in her limitlessness, has no concern for the boundaries of our mortal imaginations.

The word paradise, by the way, which comes to us from the Persian, means literally "a walled garden.

I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby—I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to—I just don't care.

The two of us went digging for trouble with a shovel and a pickax that summer, and we never had the slightest trouble finding it.

Om Namah Shivaya. I honor the divinity that resides within me. ...I repeat it again. Again. And again. It's not so much that I'm meditating as unpacking the mantra carefully, the way you would unpack your grandmother's best china if it had been stored in a box for a long time, unused.

The Geographical Distribution of Animals

Desire is the design flaw.") The

I believe that we are all transient," she began. She thought for a while and added, "I believe that we are half-blind and full of errors. I believe that we understand very little, and what we do understand is mostly wrong. I believe that life cannot be survived—that is evident!—but if one is lucky, life can be endured for quite a long while. If one is both lucky and stubborn, life can sometimes even be enjoyed.

Make sure your creativity survives its own success and failures.

For Alma, to read something once was to have ownership of it forever. She could take apart an argument the way a good soldier can dismantle his rifle—half asleep in the dark, and the thing still comes to pieces beautifully. Calculus put her into fits of ecstasies. Grammar was an old friend—perhaps from having grown up speaking so many languages simultaneously.

Alma sighed. That was quite a question. What did she believe? I believe that we are all transient, she began. She thought for a while and added, I believe that we are half-blind and full of errors. I believe that we understnad very little, and what we do understand is mostly wrong. I believe that life cannot be survived . . . but if one is lucky, life can be endured for quite a long while. If one is both lucky and stubborn, life can sometimes even be enjoyed.

Because time does not object to passing - not even in the strangest and most unfamiliar situations - time passed for Alma in Matavai Bay. Slowly, haltingly, she began to comprehend her new world.

He doesn't speak. Instead, he grasps me by the collar of my coat and presses his lips to mine. Kiaran kisses me deeply, with an urgency I never thought him capable of. He kisses me like he knows he's going to die. He kisses me like the world is going to end.

All of which is to say: You do not need a permission slip from the principal's office to live a creative life. Or if you do worry that you need a permission slip—THERE, I just gave it to you. I

Pasó más tiempo. Llegada una cierta edad, Angela, el tiempo parece caerte en la cabeza igual que la lluvia en un mes de marzo: siempre te sorprende la cantidad en que puede acumularse y la velocidad.

Don't we have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for awhile.

excited, I want to pause for a moment and ask you to consider all the negative conclusions that I could have drawn about this incident

I take leaps and gambles with my work all the time—or at least I try to. You must be willing to take risks if you want to live a creative existence. But if you're going to gamble, know that you are gambling. Never roll the dice without being aware that you are holding a pair of dice in your hands. And make certain that you can actually cover your bets (both emotionally and financially).

The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world," says an old Buddhist teaching

It was during the war, too, that I learned how to be comfortable sitting alone in a bar or restaurant. For many women, this is a strangely difficult thing to do, but eventually I mastered it. (The trick is to bring a book or newspaper, to ask for the best table nearest to the window, and to order your drink just as soon as you sit down.) Once I got the hang of it, I found that eating alone by the window in a quiet restaurant is one of life's greatest secret pleasures.

Imagine his surprise to discover that the happiest, most confident woman he's ever met was actually - when you got her alone - a murky hole of bottomless grief.