Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

So many girls get married for that same reason. Find something else to do with yourself, I say. Gosh, ladies, take up a hobby!

Nunca discutas sobre Dios. Lo mejor es decir «Estoy de acuerdo contigo». Entonces vas a tu casa y rezas lo que tú quieres. Ésta es mi idea para que las personas estén en paz con la religión.

O trabalho quer ser feito, e quer ser feito através de você.

Marriage survives, in other words, precisely because it evolves.

I've realized that one of the most unkind things I can do to somebody is to put them on a pedestal because very soon, inevitably, they're going to do something that's going to knock them off it, and then I'm going to have a lot of trouble with that because I really needed you to be something else. And that's inhumane." –Elizabeth Gilbert

What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, I realized, just because you think it's sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life. The more lightly you can pass that time, the brighter your existence becomes.

En la vida uno no puede permitirse hacer menos de lo que ha prometido.

Bravery means doing something scary.

What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?

There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it.

I simply vowed to the universe that I would write forever, regardless of the result.

The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure…I'm lonely…I'm a failure…I'm lonely…) and we become monuments to them.

But thinking about it today, I have to say that it enrages me. Arthur Watson had completely gotten away with his misdeeds and lies. Celia had been banished by Peg, and I had been banished by Edna—but Arthur had been allowed to carry on with his lovely life and his lovely wife, as though nothing had ever happened. The dirty little whores had been disposed of; the man was allowed to remain. Of course, I didn't recognize the hypocrisy back then. But Lord, I recognize it now.

did believe that my behavior made me unusual—because it didn't seem to match the behavior of other women—but I didn't believe that it made me bad.

Todos tenemos algo de lo que arrepentirnos y eso es bueno

why are you so sure that your micromanagement of every moment in this whole world is so essential

my entire life has been shaped by an early decision to reject the cult of artistic martyrdom, and instead to place my trust in the crazy notion that my work loves me as much as I love it—that it wants to play with me as much as I want to play with it—and that this source of love and play is boundless.

The English travel writer Isabel Bird, famous for her cool and detached prose, seemed scarcely able to keep from exclaiming hubba-hubba as she checked out the rugged men she kept encountering on her trip to America in the 1850s:

I have never loved the people I was supposed to love, Angela.

La vida te enseñará que no hay que tomarse las cosas tan en serio, querida. El mundo no para de cambiar. Aprende a aceptarlo. Las personas hacen promesas y luego las rompen.

To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. "To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.

in that groggy hour before her demanding day job began, she skated. And she skated and skated and skated. And yes, she loved it, as much as ever. She loved it even more than ever, perhaps, because now, as an adult, she finally had the perspective to appreciate the value of her own joy.

It isn't always comfortable or easy—carrying your fear around with you on your great and ambitious road trip, I mean—but it's always worth it, because if you can't learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you'll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting.

there is a profound sense of honor to be found in looking after yourself, and that honor will resonate powerfully in your work; it will make your work stronger.