Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes & Sayings

All transformation appears to be motivated by desperation and emergency. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds. Because if even one broken and limited human being could experience even one such episode of absolute forgiveness and acceptance of her own self, then imagine - just imagine! - what God, in all His eternal compassion, can forgive and accept. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Yoga is the effort to experience one's divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Said: "We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we're so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don't give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won't be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth - nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow." They aren't. They weren't. They never were. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world - that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimatesecrets of your marriage. — Elizabeth Gilbert

A lot of [erotica] was really interestingly disguised in the 19th-century as medical journals. So it would be in the voice of a learned doctor talking about somebody's pathologies. And then it would get really detailed. And then it would get really sweaty. And then you're like, "This isn't a doctor! I would like to see a degree, Mister!" — Elizabeth Gilbert

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You are still young, so you think only of your own self. You do not notice the tribulations that occur all around you, to other people. Do not protest; it is true. I am not condemning you. I was as selfish as you, when I was your age. It is the custom of the young to be selfish ... But someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering
no matter what you think of them and their supposed good fortune. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Genetic randomness had already determined how much talent I'd been allotted, and destiny's randomness would account for my share of luck. The only piece I had any control over was my discipline. Recognizing that, it seemed like the best plan would be to work my ass off. That was the only card I had to play, so I played it hard. — Elizabeth Gilbert

There's another wonderful Italian expression: l'arte d'arrangiarsi-the art of making something out of nothing. The art of turning a few simple ingredients into a feast,or a few gathered friends into a festival. Anyone with a talent of happiness can do this, not only the rich. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Where am I getting the brain space to store these words? I'm hoping that maybe my mind has decided to clear out some old negative thoughts and sad memories and replace them with these shiny new words. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The less you indulge yourself now, the more you can indulge yourself in the future, when you have made your fortune. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I think of modern marriage as a car strangely fashioned out of an old abandoned horse carriage, built upon the framework of a mule cart. All the original engineering is still there, underneath it all. — Elizabeth Gilbert

What a large number of factors constitute a single human being! How very many layers we operate on, and how very many influences we receive from our minds, our bodies, our histories, our families, our cities, our souls and our lunches! — Elizabeth Gilbert

There's a lot of disorder that comes along with wanting to know everything and wanting to try everything and wanting to experience everything, but there's a lot of knowledge that comes out of it too. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I was perfectly happy in my boring life before you came along. — Elizabeth Gilbert

[C]reative living is a path for the brave. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in ones lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same ole addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma ( and also of western psychology, by the way)- take care of the problem now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering-that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding-there's where you'll find heaven. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You want to write a book? Make a song? Direct a movie? Decorate pottery? Learn a dance? Explore a new land? You want to draw a penis on your wall? Do it. Who cares? It's your birthright as a human being, so do it with a cheerful heart. (I mean, take it seriously, sure - but don't take it seriously.) Let inspiration lead you wherever it wants to lead you. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Religious ceremonies are of paramount importance in Bali ( an island, don't forget, with seven unpredictable volcanoes on it-you would pray, too). — Elizabeth Gilbert

It was like time would stop, and the dancer would sort of step through some kind of portal and he wasn't doing anything different than he had ever done, 1,000 nights before, but everything would align. And all of a sudden, he would no longer appear to be merely human. He would be lit from within, and lit from below and all lit up on fire with divinity. And when this happened, back then, people knew it for what it was, you know, they called it by it's name. They would put their hands together and they would start to chant, "Allah, Allah, Allah, God God, God." That's God, you know. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Anyhow, the older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I'm far more moved by authenticity. Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You never know how a good quest is going to end. — Elizabeth Gilbert

My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: I want a spiritual teacher. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I think the thing that I lost in myself when I stopped writing fiction and the thing that I rediscovered and started mining again is, for lack of a better word, magic. It's the way you can brush up against the inexplicable and the mystical. — Elizabeth Gilbert

There were times when she looked up from her labors to ask her mother a question - looking over to the chair where Beatrix had always sat - and was startled by the nothingness to be found there. It was like looking at a spot on a wall where a clock had hung for years, and seeing only an empty space. She could not train herself not to look; the emptiness surprised her every time. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Devo farmi le ossa is how they say it in Italian. I need to make my bones. — Elizabeth Gilbert

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. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Sometimes you will need to leap from one end of this paradoxical spectrum to the other in a matter of minutes, and then back again. As I write this book, for instance, I approach each sentence as if the future of humanity depends upon my getting that sentence just right. I care, because I want it to be lovely. Therefore, anything less than a full commitment to that sentence is lazy and dishonorable. But as I edit my sentence - sometimes immediately after writing it - I have to be willing to throw it to the dogs and never look back. (Unless, of course, I decide that I need that sentence again after all, in which case I must dig up its bones, bring it back to life, and once again regard it as sacred.) It matters./It doesn't matter. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I have a friend, an aspiring musician, whose sister said to her one day, quite reasonably, "What happens if you never get anything out of this? What happens if you pursue your passion forever, but success never comes? How will you feel then, having wasted your entire life for nothing?" My friend, with equal reason, replied, "If you can't see what I'm already getting out of this, then I'll never be able to explain it to you." When it's for love, you will always do it anyhow. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Admittedly, I am not the one who looks fantastic in everything, but still I cannot help loving myself. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Well ... "why" is a hard question to answer in any language. — Elizabeth Gilbert

An abiding stereotype of creativity is that it turns people crazy. I disagree: Not expressing creativity turns people crazy. ("If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is within you, what you don't bring forth will destroy you." - Gospel of Thomas.) — Elizabeth Gilbert

There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint,'Dear saint-please, please, please ... give me the grace to win the lottery.' This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated statue come to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust,'My son-please, please, please ... buy a ticket. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You already know so much more than you think you know. You are not finished; you are merely ready. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The world was his divan. There was such a freedom in it. — Elizabeth Gilbert

But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome - people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. — Elizabeth Gilbert

There is a famous question that shows up, it seems, in every single self-help book ever written: What would you do if you knew that you could not fail? But I've always seen it differently. I think the fiercest question of all is this one: What would you do even if you knew that you might very well fail? What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant? What do you love even more than you love your own ego? How fierce is your trust in that love? — Elizabeth Gilbert

One does not leave so small and beautiful a female creature alone with ten heated men in the middle of the night. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust - and those elements are universally accessible. Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The often surprising results of that hunt - that's what I call Big Magic. — Elizabeth Gilbert

They loved each other, she realized. They loved each other, because they knew each other. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Richard didn't even have time to ask if I thought I'd ever amount to anything in this life before I looked him eye to eye and said, I already have, mister. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I'm still aspiring to be a better and better person, but I think that disappointments have made me gentler with other people and their disappointments, the stuff that they have to carry around and endure. — Elizabeth Gilbert

In ancient Greek, the word for the highest degree of human happiness is eudaimonia, which basically means "well-daemoned" - that is, nicely taken care of by some external divine creative spirit guide. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control. — Elizabeth Gilbert

At that moment of realization (that union with God is always present), that's when God let me go, let me slide through His fingers with this last compassionate, unspoken message:
You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Though I suppose people do reproduce sometimes for that reason - for insurance against later regret. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Opening up space for ourselves is a life-affirming act, a sacred act. I believe we must all be allowed to affirm and open our own lives, in celebration of the miracle of our existence. I do not believe we were put here on Earth to feel sick and weary and sad forever. I do not believe we were put here to grow old when we are still young. This — Elizabeth Gilbert

Whatever this feeling is - this is what I have been praying for. And this is also what I have been praying to. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You are accidentally leaving your DNA all over everything in a novel because it's all coming from you. — Elizabeth Gilbert

How could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn't it? — Elizabeth Gilbert

When artists are burdened with the label of "genius," I think they lose the ability to take themselves lightly, or to create freely. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. — Elizabeth Gilbert

For some reason, I feel the same way about you that I felt about my kids when they were small - that it wasn't their job to love me, it was my job to love them. You can decide to feel however you want to, but I love you and I will always love you. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Attraversiamo (meaning "Lets cross over" in Italian) — Elizabeth Gilbert

The whole sphere of air that surrounds us, Alma, is alive with invisible attractions - electric, magnetic, fiery and thoughtful. There is a universal sympathy all around us ... When we cease all argument and debate - both internal and external - our true questions can be heard and answered ... That is the gathering of magic. — Elizabeth Gilbert

But I was supposed to want to have a baby. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't you will eat away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments. — Elizabeth Gilbert

If I'm being forgiving of myself, I could say I'm somebody who was really hungry for experiences. The same thing that would make me go try to be a trail cook on a ranch was the same thing that would make me want to have sex with a couple cowboys while I was there. — Elizabeth Gilbert

"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. In other words: Get used to it. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You have no idea how strong my love is! — Elizabeth Gilbert

I had a great teacher in India who said to me, 'If you think you're spiritual and evolved and enlightened, go home for Christmas.' — Elizabeth Gilbert

My old man also said this about Martha Knox: "She's not beautiful, but I think she knows how to sell it." Well, it's true that I wanted to hold her braid. I always had wanted to from first seeing it and mostly I wanted to in that dance, but I didn't reach for it and I didn't set down my beer bottle. Martha Knox wasn't selling anything. We didn't dance again that night or again at all, because — Elizabeth Gilbert

We had more fun waiting in line together at the Department of Motor Vehicles than most couples have on their honeymoons. We gave each other same nickname, so there would be no separation between us. We made goals, vows, promises and dinner together. He read books to me ... — Elizabeth Gilbert

There were times, especially when I was traveling for 'Eat, Pray, Love,' when, I swear to God, I would feel this weight of my female ancestors, all those Swedish farmwives from beyond the grave who were like, 'Go! Go to Naples! Eat more pizza! Go to India, ride an elephant! Do it! Swim in the Indian Ocean. Read those books. Learn a language.' — Elizabeth Gilbert

Hearing this announcement, your soul will mobilize accordingly. It will mobilize ecstatically, in fact, because this is what your soul was born for. (Trust me, your soul has been waiting for you to wake up to your own existence for years.) But — Elizabeth Gilbert

I work steadily, and I always thank the process. Whether — Elizabeth Gilbert

The emergency that always gets you in the end is the one you didn't prepare for. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Never go into debt to become a writer. Always find other ways to support yourself so you can do the work you truly love for the right reasons. Never ask your art to support you. If you ask your art to support you it will either end up comprised or you'll be disappointed with it. It's a lot to ask of creativity for it to provide for you financially. Find a scrappy way to get by and then do the work you love for the reasons you love. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Whether you think you're brilliant or you think you're a loser, just make whatever you need to make and toss it out there. — Elizabeth Gilbert

What do you love even more than you love your own ego? — Elizabeth Gilbert

Let your conscience be your guide. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Whenever I got those rejection letters, then, I would permit my ego to say aloud to whoever had signed it: You think you can scare me off? I've got another eighty years to wear you down! There are people who haven't even been born yet who are gonna reject me someday - that's how long I plan to stick around. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Modern marriage is first and foremost a romantic and private union, but the tax laws and inheritance laws and religious implications that still surround this institution indicate that marriage has evolved without casting away its earlier purposes or assumptions. It's like we just keep building on this thing, piling new advancements on the old model. — Elizabeth Gilbert

What's more, I believe in argument and I even love it. Argument is our most steadfast pathway toward truth, for it is the only proven arbalest against superstitious thinking, or lackadaisical axioms. — Elizabeth Gilbert

It was like one of those dreams where you discover a previously unknown room in your house and you have that expansive feeling that your life has more possibility to it than you thought it did. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I had long ago learned that when you are the giant, alien visitor to a remote and foreign culture it is sort of your job to become an object of ridicule. It's the least you can do, really, as a polite guest. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I lose count of how many bottles of Sardinian wine we drink before Deborah introduces to the table the suggestion that we follow a nice American custom here tonight by joining hands-and each in turn-saying what we are most grateful for. In three languages, then, this montage of gratitude comes forth, one testimony at a time. — Elizabeth Gilbert

According to the mystics, this search for divine bliss is the entire purpose of a human life. this is why we all chose to be born, and this is why all the suffering and pain of life on earth is worthwhile
just for the chance to experience this infinite love. And once you have found this divinity within, can you hold it? Because if you can ... bliss. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Your fear is the most boring thing about you. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Love renders all of our plans and all of our hopes a gamble — Elizabeth Gilbert

God is an experience of supreme love. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You know, I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche. It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job o fa creative person ... Frustration is not an interruption of your process; frustration is the process. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Most of my prayers are expressions of sheer gratitude for the fullness of my contentment. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I won the argument against the knife that night, but barely. I had some other good ideas around that time
about how jumping off a building or blowing my brains out with a gun might stop the suffering. but something about spending a night with a knife in my hand did it.
The next morning I called my friend Susan as the sun came up, begged her to help me. I don't think a woman in the whole history of my family had ever done that before, had ever sat in the middle of the road like that and said, in the middle of her life, I cannot walk another step further
somebody has to help me. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Ketut, why is life all crazy like this?" I asked my medicine man the next day ... So what can we do about the craziness of the world?"
Nothing." Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. "This is nature of world. This is destiny. Worry about your craziness only-make you in peace. — Elizabeth Gilbert

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. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I think another way that you can really harm yourself as an artist is by buying into the mythology that it's really important. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The sound universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there's a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of night the dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I share it here because something was about to occur on that bathroom floor that would change forever the progression of my life..what happened was that I started to pray. — Elizabeth Gilbert

As the psychologist Carol Gilligan has written, "Women's sense of integrity seems to be entwined with an ethic of care, so that to see themselves as women is to see themselves in a relationship of connection. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Anyhow, what else are you going to do with your time here on earth - not make things? Not do interesting stuff? Not follow your love and your curiosity? — Elizabeth Gilbert