Inspiring Quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert
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If you want to get to the castle, Groceries, you've got to swim the moat.

A lovely evening of new idioms and fresh mozzarella.

The beauty and variety of the natural world are merely the visible legacies of endless war.

I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady.

When I don't know what I'm doing, I look like I don't know what I'm doing. When I'm excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently, I look lost.

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.

For if there is one thing I have learned over the years about men, it is that feelings of powerlessness do not usually bring forth their finest qualities.

Nobody's really paying that much attention to your massive personal dramas.

If Todd Willingham was guilty of anything, it was just his self-preservation. He got up and ran out of the house and then thought about the children after the fact.

So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it.

Creativity is a crushing chore and a glorious mystery. The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.

Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty?

Psychologists suggest that we must reach back at least three generations to look for clues whenever we begin untangling the emotional legacy of any one family's history.

You have no idea how strong my love is!

Go back to bed so that, when the tempest comes, you'll be strong enough to deal with it. And the tempest is coming, dear one. Very soon. But not tonight.

A true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.

I am determined to make the most of this life that I have, damn it -- it's that kind of stubbornness I think we all need more of.

Creativity is a scavenger hunt. It's your obligation to pay attention to clues, to the thing that gives you that little tweak.

Every few years, I think, 'Maybe now I'm finally smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand 'Ulysses.'' So I pick it up and try it again. And by page 10, as always, I'm like, 'What the hell?'

Look -- I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could someday have an unexamined lunch?

The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.

What worked yesterday doesn't always work today.

I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and all I reaped for my trouble was a harvest of bitter fruit.

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.

When it comes to women, get your life together first. Put on your own oxygen mask first. Figure out who you are. Mature. And then go find somebody to share that life with.

Of course you are. I'm sorry for many of the things I've done, too. Everyone is sorry. It's good to be sorry--but don't make a fetish of it.

And try not to make a habit of getting engaged in the first place, Vivvie. It can leade to marriage if you're not careful.

Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

The great lack of parity between husbands and wives has always been spawned by the disproportionate degree of self-sacrifice that women are willing to make on behalf of those they love.

The emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end, after many years of partnership.

Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.

Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.

I am a better person when I have less on my plate.

The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,...The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself.

Fear -- who cares?

It's what I call the haute couture, high-end version of fear perfectionism. It's just fear in really good shoes. But it's still fear.

At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.