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8531f9b
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It is not we as individuals, then, who must bend uncomfortably around the institution of marriage; rather, it is the institution of marriage that has to bend uncomfortably around us. Because "they" (the powers-that-be) have never been entirely able to stop "us" (two people" from connecting our lives together and creating a secret world of our own. And so "they" eventually have no choice but to legally permit "us' to marry, in some shape or ..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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34bfc73
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Everything is so goddamn scary. Defending
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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7b4c662
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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"
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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98db83b
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Take seriously. Make punctual. Be cool and easy. Remember--everything you do, you do for God. And everything God does, He do for you.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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a041aed
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Your ego is a wonderful servant, but it's a terrible master--because the only thing your ego ever wants is reward, reward, and more reward. And
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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bd60f1f
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I've met travelers who are so physically sturdy they could drink a shoebox of water from a Calcutta gutter and never get sick. People who can pick up new languages where others of us might only pick up infectious diseases. People who know how to stand down a threatening border guard or cajole an uncooperative bureaucrat at the visa office. People who are the right height and complexion that they kind of look halfway normal wherever they go ..
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traveling
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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298083e
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Aside from my cockeyed internal compass, I also have a shortage of personal coolness, which can be a liability in travel. I have never learned how to arrange my face into that blank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know - that super-relaxed, totally-in-charge expression which makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of riot in Jakart..
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traveling
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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a449284
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Humor is hard to catch in a second language. Especially when you're as serious a young man as Giovanni. He said to me the other night, 'When you are ironic, I am always behind you. I am slower. It is like you are the lightning and I am the thunder.
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irony
language
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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d7cff38
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you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear every day. This
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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89567c1
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Don't fret about the irrationality and unpredictability of all this strangeness. Give in to it. Such is the bizarre, unearthly contract of creative living. There is no theft; there is no ownership; there is no tragedy; there is no problem. There is no time or space where inspiration comes from - and also no competition, no ego, no limitations. There is only the stubbornness of the idea itself, refusing to stop searching until it has found a..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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64f03ed
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As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff of it is bad for you. I
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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8375f64
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Over the course of the summer, he taught the children to eat foods they had never known, to sharpen and use knives, to carve their own spoons, to make knots and play Indian games and- every time they cut a branch off a living tree- to cut away a small lock of their own hair, to leave as an offering of thanks.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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1c7c3d2
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Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them." Why"
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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3de624b
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You know, you seem like a completely different person, now that you're with this new boyfriend. You used to look like your husband, but now you look like David. You even dress like him and talk like him. You know how some people look like their dogs? I think maybe you always look like your men.
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identity
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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3697021
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My spiritual investigations interest my sister mostly from a point of intellectual curiosity. 'I think that kind of faith is so beautiful,' she whispers to me in the church, 'but I can't do it, I just can't...
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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8d68ae6
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A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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933219a
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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
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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7a6b9d2
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you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear 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. Drop
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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916b49a
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inspiration will always try its best to work with you--but if you are not ready or available, it may indeed choose to leave you and to search for a different human collaborator.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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66e7d23
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No, when I refer to "creative living," I am speaking more broadly. I'm talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear. One"
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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d4a133c
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I wrote that book anyhow, because I needed to write it for my own intimate purposes - and also because I was curious to see if I could convey my emotional experiences adequately on paper.
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writing
reason-for-writing
reasons-for-writing
why-i-write
why-to-write
why-we-write
why-write
writing-motivation
writing-inspiration
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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d24e6d4
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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.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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813a6b0
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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."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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b7c7e13
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creative living is a path for the brave. We
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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5cc4264
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Culturally, though not theologically, I'm a Christian. I was born a Protestant of the white Anglo-Saxon persuasion. And while I do love that great teacher of peace who was called Jesus, and while I do reserve the right to ask myself in certain trying situations what indeed He would do, I can't swallow that one fixed rule of Christianity insisting that Christ is the only path to God. Strictly speaking, then, I cannot call myself a Christian...
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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63e71c5
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from Beatrix in this case, who quoted the esteemed Swedish botanical taxonomist Carl Linnaeus on how to distinguish minerals from plants, and plants from animals: "Stones grow. Plants grow and live. Animals grow, live, and feel")."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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4af6496
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both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish...
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life
love
pleasure
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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953612d
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She heard her father's voice as she prepared, remembering all the times she had taken dictation for him, or had overheard him instructing young botanists. 'Be wakeful and watchful,' she heard Henry say. 'Make sure you are not the only member of your party who can write or read a letter. If you need need to find water, follow a dog. If you are starving, eat insects before you waste your energy on hunting. Anything that a bird can eat, you ca..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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86b0627
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El mundo esta lleno de muerte y podredumbre, pero los sabios no sufren, porque conocen las urdidumbres del mundo
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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95e4626
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Era un fragmento diminuto del universo, pero tambien era exactamente del tamano del universo
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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001b88a
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Why" is a hard question to answer in any langauage."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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47bcd5c
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Giulio and Maria have a beautiful apartment, the most impressive feature of which is, to my mind, the wall that Maria once covered with angry curses against Giulio (scrawled in black magic marker) because they were having an argument and 'he yells louder than me' and she wanted to get a word in edgewise.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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93ece6d
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since when did creativity become a suffering contest?
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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c92d07c
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During my first few weeks in Italy, all my Protestant synapses were zinging in distress, looking for a task. I wanted to take on pleasure like a homework assignment, or a giant science fair project.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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9b40c04
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I want you to figure out a way to stop that from happening.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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1a50328
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I've never stood on a piece of ground as throbbingly, even pornographically, generative.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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47a1674
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Om Namah Shivaya. I honor the divinity that resides within me. ...I repeat it again. Again. And again. It's not so much that I'm meditating as unpacking the mantra carefully, the way you would unpack your grandmother's best china if it had been stored in a box for a long time, unused.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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9ba512f
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Todo comienza cuando el objeto de tu adoracion te da una dosis embriagadora y alucinogena de algo que jamas te habias atrevido a admitir que necesitabas --un coctel toxico-sentimental, quiza, de un amor estrepitoso y un entusiasmo arrebatador--.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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424b1a9
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Well child, you may do whatever you like with your suffering. It belongs to you. But i shall tell you what i do with mine. I gasp it by the small hairs, i cast it to the ground and i grind it under the heel of my boot. I suggest you learn to do the same
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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4aa2fc5
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It should have been unbearable to face this sorry inventory, yet for some reason it was not.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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8086fd0
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A sad-faced Russian woman tells us she's treating herself to Italian lessons because "I think I deserve something beautiful."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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6612c36
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the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one's humanity.
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life
pleasure
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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4713e61
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Death--so feared and so dodged--was, once you faced it, the simplest thing going. In order to die, one merely had to stop attempting to live. One merely had to agree to vanish. If Alma simply remained still, pinned beneath the bulk of this unknown opponent, she would be effortlessly erased.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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329907e
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The unnecessary and superfluous volume of pure beauty around here is not to be believed. I can pick papayas and bananas right off the trees outside my bedroom window. There's a cat who lives here who is enormously affectionate to me for half an hour everyday before I feed him, then moans crazily the rest of the time likes he's having Vietnam war flashbacks. Oddly, I don't mind this. I don't mind anything these days. I can't imagine or remem..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |