Inspiring Quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

This is intimacy: the trading of stories in the dark.

You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here.

Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents.

You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

I've come to realize that the contemporary creative culture is not generating the best possible outcome.

I don't think you can come into your wisdom until you have made mistakes on your own skin and felt them in reality of your own life.

Marriage is not simply a romantic union between two people; it's also a political and economic contract of the highest order.

Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.

I have searched frantically for contentment for so many years in so many ways, and all the acquisitions and accomplishments- they run you down in the end.

Bhuta ia, dewa ia. (Bali expression meaning Man is a demon, man is a god.).

I wonder if I am capable of being somebody's sun, somebody's everything. Am I centered enough now to be the center of somebody else's life?

By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later--again, for its own mysterious reasons.

Our relationship now thoroughly ruined, with even civility destroyed between us, all I wanted anymore was the door.

For the entire decade of my 30s and the early part of my 40s, I didn't write a word of fiction. I just left behind a dream of my life.

Nothing is less efficient than perfectionism.

I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

The more unsettled and unbalanced we feel, the more quickly and recklessly we are likely to fall in love.

Don't rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the most capacity to transform you.

It may be that same-sex couples will save the institution of marriage.

Women are capable of enduring a tremendous amount of disappointment and still have a good life.

Everybody imitates before they can innovate.

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

Life's metaphors are God's instructions.

As the saying goes, Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them. Why would I want to keep my limitations?

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.

Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.

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

The Balinese don't wait and see how things go. That would be terrifying. They organize how things go, in order to keep things from falling apart.

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

What kind of God do you believe in? my answer is easy: I believe in a magnificent God.

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.

There are always two figures in a marriage, two votes, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations.

He was powerful and I died of love in his shadow.

Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one.

Lucky is the soul whose only troubles are self-inflicted.

There are times when the only access I have to the truest person that I am is when I'm alone and trying to solve a sentence. It's exciting, even when it's frustrating, even when I can't do it right.

We're already separated that's official but there's still a window of hope left open that perhaps someday we could give things another try.

You're wishin' too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.

Even in the worst tragedies and crisis, there's no reason to add to everyone's misery by looking miserable yourself.

I see a lot of women who can't travel when they're young, and then their kids grow up and they become amazing adventurers. Travel is not only for the young. Sometimes it's wasted on the young.

The appreciation of pleasure can be the anchor of humanity.

Being content with what you have already is an art form that leads to a peace that can't be replaced by anything else.

Creativity is a gift to the creator not just a gift to the audience.

If you're alive, you're a creative person.

I myself have never been enchanted by the dream of the white wedding, and, heaven help us, the expectation that this exquisitely catered event should be 'the happiest moment' of one's life.

Dolce far niente: the pleasure of doing anything.

I feel like if I were to get another tattoo, it would probably be those two words. Just stubborn, stubborn, stubborn gladness.

Whenever I would feel such happiness my guilt alarm went off.

I actually have a great deal of respect for antidepressants; I think they can be enormously mighty tools toward recovery.

Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don't really want to live in it.

There is a quiet glory in merely making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations.

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

You can butcher the sheep only once. But if you are careful, you can shear the sheep every year.

Oh, cold world -- I have grown so weary of you and all your horrible bathrooms.

The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident.

Dear me, how I love a library.

In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work.

The only thing you need to do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer.

Marriage is a strange combination of dream and reality, and we spend our lives as couples trying to negotiate that divide.