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4180e0c 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. words pain life Elizabeth Gilbert
acf6cff Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. How do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody--so utterly well known and so thoroughly ever-present that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air? Elizabeth Gilbert
141676f I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life--whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on the occasions when I can't rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because I'm feeling too damn sorry for myself, I can choose to keep trying to change my outlook). Elizabeth Gilbert
dfec41d None of it was ever easy, but that wasn't the point. I had never asked writing to be easy; I had only asked writing to be interesting. And it was always interesting to me. Elizabeth Gilbert
3a2e19d So I don't try to kill off my fear. I don't go to war against it. Instead, I make all that space for it. Heaps of space. Every single day. I'm making space for fear right this moment. I allow my fear to live and breathe and stretch out its legs comfortably. It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too. Elizabeth Gilbert
2196860 I was a sensitive and easily traumatized creature who would fall into fits of weeping at any disturbance in her force field. Elizabeth Gilbert
9fa64cd Which left me with nothing but a dazzled heart and the sense that I live in a most remarkable world, thick with mysteries. It all called to mind the British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington's memorable explanation of how the universe works: "Something unknown is doing we don't know what." But the best part is: I don't need to know what." Elizabeth Gilbert
2d1a116 You have got to be fucking kidding me. Elizabeth Gilbert
002b152 Are you considering becoming a creative person? Too late, you already are one. Elizabeth Gilbert
f660373 I have nothing against any of these terms. I feel they are all equal because they are all equally adequate and inadequate descriptions of the indescribable. Elizabeth Gilbert
28c8521 l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle... Elizabeth Gilbert
dd048ff The unnecessary and superfluous volume of pure beauty around here is not the be believed. Elizabeth Gilbert
567bc9d We don't have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: Elizabeth Gilbert
50f8f3d 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." spirituality life philosophy hell Elizabeth Gilbert
1a46967 gelato. Elizabeth Gilbert
26c1049 toga. Elizabeth Gilbert
8b650e0 Katie Arnold-Ratliff. Katie writes like a dream. But she told me that she'd Elizabeth Gilbert
4d6e631 An unchecked ego is what the Buddhists call "a hungry ghost"--forever famished, eternally howling with need and greed." Elizabeth Gilbert
54886f0 Go be whomever you want to be, then. Do whatever you want to do. Pursue whatever fascinates you and brings you to life. Create whatever you want to create--and Elizabeth Gilbert
fd7d6a5 My ultimate choice, then, is to always approach my work from a place of stubborn gladness. Elizabeth Gilbert
973db05 Let people have their opinions. More than that--let people be in love with their opinions, just as you and I are in love with ours. But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else's blessing (or even their comprehension) in order to make your own creative work. And always remember that people's judgments about you are none of your business. Lastly, Elizabeth Gilbert
4a9e86f What are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work? Elizabeth Gilbert
3822d2d When I talk about "creative living" here, please understand that I am not necessarily talking about pursuing a life that is professionally or exclusively devoted to the arts." Elizabeth Gilbert
2044e28 This is how you must do it, people. I have never created anything in my life that did not make me feel, at some point or another, like I was the guy who just walked into a fancy ball wearing a homemade lobster costume. But you must stubbornly walk into that room, regardless, and you must hold your head high. You made it; you get to put it out there. Never apologize for it, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best wit.. Elizabeth Gilbert
f6f8d45 Women are the one's holding themselves back from participating in the first place - holding back their ideas, holding back their contributions, holding back their leadership and their talents. Too many women still believe that they're not allowed to put themselves forward at all until both they are their work are perfect and beyond criticism. Meanwhile putting forth work that is far from perfect rarely stops men from participating in the gl.. Elizabeth Gilbert
8b26a4b For a group of nationalist intellectuals much later in history to have sat down and decided that Dante's Italian would now be the official language of Italy would be very much as if a group of Oxford dons had sat down one day in the early nineteenth century and decided that--from this point forward--everybody in England was going to speak pure Shakespeare. Elizabeth Gilbert
795c6cc They come upon me all silent and menacing like Pinkerton Detectives, and they flank me--Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me their badges. I know these guys very well. Elizabeth Gilbert
c69165c At no point in history has a bright young girl with plenty of food and a good constitution perished from too much learning. learning girls Elizabeth Gilbert
0e46ad3 Women are the one's holding themselves back from participating in the first place - holding back their ideas, holding back their contributions, holding back their leadership and their talents. Too many women still believe that they're not allowed to put themselves forward at all until both they and their work are perfect and beyond criticism. Meanwhile putting forth work that is far from perfect rarely stops men from participating in the gl.. Elizabeth Gilbert
3bdc8ef I got a mother who wasn't having it. She wasn't having a minute of my drama, which is probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to me... she was not about to raise a little candy ass. Not on her watch. Elizabeth Gilbert
eb17593 I don't know what I think until I write about it (Joan Didion). Elizabeth Gilbert
6b7ec04 As Joan Didion said, "I don't know what I think until I write about it." Elizabeth Gilbert
1d87587 como dice Garcia Marquez, se parece al amor, pero sin los problemas del amor. Elizabeth Gilbert
e52b5e5 In order to live this way - free to create, free to explore - you must possess a fierce sense of personal entitlement. Creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that - merely by being here - you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own. The poet David Whyte calls this sense of creative entitlement 'the arrogance of belonging,' and claims that it is an absolutely vital privilege to cultivate.. Elizabeth Gilbert
c718960 I believe that our creativity grows like sidewalk weeds out of the cracks between our pathologies--not from the pathologies themselves. But so many people think it's the other way around. Elizabeth Gilbert
85c7d35 This is what I would like to hold on to. Please help me memorize this feeling of contentment and help me always support it. I'm putting this happiness in a bank somewhere, not merely FDIC protected but guarded by my four spirit brothers, held there as insurance against future trials in life. Elizabeth Gilbert
b1a5670 In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. Elizabeth Gilbert
400264d There's a reason they call God a presence--because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time. Elizabeth Gilbert
3684d4e I am alone, I am all alone, I am completely alone. Grasping this reality, I let go of my bag, drop to my knees and press my forehead against the floor. There, I offer up to the universe a fervent prayer of thanks. Elizabeth Gilbert
f7f98a9 I don't want to be married anymore. I was trying so hard not to know this, but the truth kept insisting itself to me. Elizabeth Gilbert
6dd80a9 One wouldn't have noticed it before, but now it was obvious. It was as though Ambrose had opened an inlet to something previously invisible, and Alma could finally see a truth she would otherwise have been blind to forever. Elizabeth Gilbert
c7c0c90 The often surprising results of that hunt--that's what I call Big Magic. Elizabeth Gilbert
7c5589f I want to have a lasting experience of God," I told him. "Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God." Elizabeth Gilbert
438a0f6 Namely, that I don't feel comfortable petitioning for specific things from God, because that feels to me like a kind of weakness of faith. I don't like asking, "Will you change this or that thing in my life that's difficult for me?" Because--who knows?--God might want me to be facing that particular challenge for a reason. Instead, I feel more comfortable praying for the courage to face whatever occurs in my life with equanimity, no matter .. Elizabeth Gilbert