Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

His spelling was several degrees beyond arbitrary, and his punctuation brought reason to sigh with unhappiness. But

The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying

Wayan laughed and kissed her daughter, all the sadness about the divorce suddenly gone from her face.

Just say what you want to say, then, and say it with all your heart.

Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit

they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of this world.

Later in life he reported that he had found his fame boring—not because it was immoral or corrupting, but simply because it was exactly the same thing every day. He was looking for something richer, more textured, more varied. So he dropped out.

I asked, You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell - the destinations - are the same thing anyway? Same - same, he said. Same in end, so better to be happy on journey. I said, So, if heaven is love, then hell is... Love, too, he said.

Everything is so goddamn scary. Defending

Even smile in your liver.

you must never become lax about maintaining it

Ruin is the Road to Transformation

to unfold a certain beauty and transcendence within her life that she cannot seem to access in any other manner.

would happen next, as much as ever. The thing was to resist submersion for as long as possible. She clutched the great tree as if it were a horse. She pressed her cheek against its silent, living flank. She said, "You and I are very far from home, aren't we?" In the dark gardens, in the middle of the quiet city night, the tree did not

I noticed that my fear never changed, never delighted, never offered a surprise twist or an unexpected ending. My fear was a song with only one note—only one word, actually—and that word was "STOP!" My fear never had anything more interesting or subtle to offer than that one emphatic word, repeated at full volume on an endless loop: "STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP!" Which

he was still my lighthouse and my albatross in equal measure; the only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying, the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving

Yoga, in Sanskrit, can be translated as union. It originally comes from the root word yuj, which means to yoke, to attach yourself to a task at hand with ox-like discipline. And the task at hand in yoga is to find union - between mind and body, between the individual and her god, between our thoughts and the source of our thoughts, between teacher and student, and even between ourselves and our sometimes hard-to-bend neighbors.

We're all related, after all, so there's going to be some repetition of creative instinct. Everything reminds us of something. But once you put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes yours.

I am very empty in the bank since the bomb.

Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me.

It is well worth seeing City of Girls, if only to enjoy Edna Parker Watson's costumes—which are delectable, from stem to stern.

We loved each other. That was never the question. It's just that we couldn't figure out how to stop making each other desperately, shriekingly, soul-punishingly miserable.

I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue

Whenever anybody tells me they want to write a book in order to help other people, I always think, Oh, please don't. Please don't try to help me.