Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

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?

Sex is often a cheat - a shortcut of intimacy. A way to skip over knowing somebody's heart by knowing, instead, their mere body.

And no, this story does not end with her winning any championship medals. It doesn't have to. In fact, this story does not end at all, because Susan is still figure skating several mornings a week—simply because skating is still the best way for her to unfold a certain beauty and transcendence within her life that she cannot seem to access in any other manner.

Qué sucedería al crear una vida lo bastante expansiva como para poder sincronizar varios contrarios incongruentes en un esquema vital que no excluyera nada? Mi verdad era exactamente la que había contado al curandero de Bali... Es decir, quería experimentar ambas cosas. Quería los placeres mundanos y la trascendencia divina..., la gloria dual de una vida humana.

Why It's Worth It 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.

how I choose to handle myself as a writer is entirely my own choice. I can make my creativity into a killing field, or I can make it into a really interesting cabinet of curiosities. I can even make it into an act of prayer. My ultimate choice, then, is to always approach my work from a place of stubborn gladness.

Odana sam i uporna u svojoj ljubavi prema putovanjima, kao što sam oduvek bila odana i uporna u svim drugim ljubavima. Na putovanje gledam kao što sre?na novope?ena majka gleda na svoje razmaženo novoro?en?e - jednostavno ne marim u kakve me sve situacije dovodi. Zato što ga obožavam. Zato što je moje. Zato što izgleda isto kao ja. Ako želi, može da se ispovra?a svud po meni - jednostavno ne marim zbog toga.

Sometimes it takes a very long while to figure things out.

to be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow- this is human offering that can be border on miraculous

Henry that learning things gave a person advantage over other people.

It should have been unbearable to face this sorry inventory, yet for some reason it was not.

But a lot of people don't know exactly what their passion is, or they may have multiple passions, or they may be going through a midlife change of passion—all of which can leave them feeling confused and blocked and insecure.

There are many reasons why women's voices and visions are not more widely represented today in creative fields. Some of that exclusion is due to regular old misogyny, but it's also true that—all too often—women are the ones holding themselves back from participating in the first place. Holding back their ideas, holding back their contributions, holding back their leadership and their talents.

Ovau teie! Toa hai a'e tau metua i ta 'oe! E 'ore tau 'somore e mae qe ia 'eo! ~ Alma Whittaker

Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift.

It's not that there is ever a shortage of people—oh, heavens no. It is merely that—as the years pass—there comes to be a terrible shortage of your people. The ones you loved.

Because God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies (or however the old adage goes), some wonderful things did happen to me in the shadow of all that sorrow.

Because the truth of the matter is, most people don't finish things! Look around you, the evidence is everywhere: People don't finish. They begin ambitious projects with the best of intentions, but then they get stuck in a mire of insecurity and doubt and hairsplitting . . . and they stop. So if you can just complete something—merely complete it!—you're already miles ahead of the pack, right there.

She was paying me the compliment of her undivided attention, ...

But I don't sit around waiting for passion to strike me. I keep working steadily, because I believe it is our privilege as humans to keep making things for as long as we live, and because I enjoy making things. Most of all, I keep working because I trust that creativity is always trying to find me, even when I have lost sight of it.

move, etc., etc., etc.).

do not be bold. You can butcher the sheep only once. But if you are careful, you can shear the sheep every year.

The earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves. The

she admitted that perhaps she wanted to be a writer. He smiled at the girl with infinite compassion and asked, "Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to bring forth this work? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.