Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

I'm talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.

But we work with what we know in this life

Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying, "Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.

fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun. This

I was not built only to labor, and then to sleep, and then to labor again the next day--with no pleasure or excitement. There had to be more to life than toil and travail.

Not merely alive, but outfitted with a mind that was functioning at the uppermost limits of its capacity—a mind that was seeing everything, and understanding everything, as though watching it all from the highest imaginable ridge.

Everything I've ever written has brought me into being. Every project has matured me in a different way. I am who I am today precisely because of what I have made, and what it has made me into. Creativity has hand raised me and forged me into an adult.

En un mundo dominado por el desorden y el desastre y el fraude tal vez sólo se pueda confiar en la belleza.

doing nothing but eating pasta

You are an idealist, which means that you are destined to be disappointed, and perhaps even wounded. You seek a gospel of benevolence and miracle, which leaves no room for the sorrows of existence.

Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents (eating the couch, digging a hole through the living room floor, biting the mailman, etc.). It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case that if I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something (myself, a relationship, or my own peace of mind).

Everything sucks, some of the time." You just have to decide what sort of suckage you're willing to deal with. So the question is not so much "What are you passionate about?" The question is "What are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work?

Are you considering becoming a creative person? Too late, you already are one.

Most of my writing life, to be perfectly honest, is not freaky, old-timey, voodoo-style Big Magic. Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that's how it gets done. Most of it is not like fairy dust in the least.

Perhaps creativity's greatest mercy is this: By completely absorbing our attention for a short and magical spell, it can relieve us temporarily from the dreadful burden of being who we are.

Pasada una cierta edad vamos por este mundo en cuerpos hechos de secretos y de arrepentimiento, de dolor y de viejas heridas abiertas. Nuestros corazones están apenados y maltrechos por todo este sufrimiento y, sin embargo, nos las arreglamos para salir adelante

These adaptations did not

You abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope!) that something greater will be offered you in return for what you've given up. Every

Of course, nobody is required to stand in the field of honor," Olive continued. "If you find it too challenging, you may always exit, and then you can remain a child. But if you wish to be a person of character, I'm afraid this is the only way. But it

We are all walking repositories of hidden treasures.

Para hallar el equilibrio que buscas te tienes que convertir en esto. Debes tener los pies tan firmemente plantados en la tierra que parezca que tienes cuatro piernas en lugar de dos. De este modo podrás estar en el mundo. Pero debes dejar de mirar el mundo con la mente. Tienes que mirarlo con el corazón. Así llegarás a conocer a Dios.

A whole bunch of people had some opinions about my novel for a short while, and then everyone moved on, because people are busy and they have their own lives to think about.

I don't regret it. It was an adventure. 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.

Those who are ill-prepared to endure the battle for survival should perhaps never have attempted living in the first place. The only unforgivable