Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes
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101. “I believe that – if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression – that you should take on this work like a holy calling.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

102. “That’s just your ego, trying to make sure it stays in charge. This is what ego does. It keeps you feeling separate, keeps you with a sense of duality, tries to convince you that you’re flawed and broken and alone instead of whole.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

103. “If you’re going to answer the call and you’re going to transform and you’re going to change, get ready. It is not a day at the beach.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

104. “When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

105. “Beauty is not required. Beauty is accuracy’s distraction.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

106. “Creativity asks you to enter realms with uncertain outcomes. People want to create a safe life for themselves so they try to live without fear and they end up killing their creativity in the process.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

107. “Take me someplace where we can be silent together.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

108. “You must learn how to become a deeply disciplined half-ass.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

109. “I have a rigid self-accountability. You have to work hard.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

110. “God is an experience of supreme love.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

111. “Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

112. “There’s no trouble in this world so serious that it can’t be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

113. “Anyway, at some point in a woman’s life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time. After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

114. “Success isn’t about acquiring things, it’s about discovering your life purpose and following the call.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

115. “Be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

116. “Own your disappointment, acknowledge it for what it is, and move on.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

117. “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 attainment.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

118. “I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the ‘monkey mind’ – the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

119. “The best we can do then, in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally – no matter what insanity is transpiring out there.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

120. “If you do say yes to an idea, now it’s showtime.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

121. “Also, I could finally sleep. And this was the real gift, because when you cannot sleep, you cannot get yourself out of the ditch – there’s not a chance.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

122. “Dear Lord, please show me everything I need to understand about forgiveness and surrender.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

123. “Some days are meant to be counted, others are meant to be weighed.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

124. “If you want to get to the castle, Groceries, you’ve got to swim the moat.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

125. “Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever walked out and left? No? It’s because he doesn’t care! He’s in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

126. “My heart was broken so badly last time that it still hurts. Isn’t that crazy? To still have a broken heart almost two years after a love story ends?”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

127. “I do not need to love you to prove that I love myself!!”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

128. “I was a writer before ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ and I’ll be a writer after it’s over. It’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

129. “Not everything has an answer.” Alma found this to be such a staggering piece of intelligence that she was struck dumb by it for several hours. All she could do was sit and ponder the notion in an amazed stupor.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

130. “No experience in this world has ever been cathartic without the willing participation of the individual. Life does not automatically bestow wisdom or growth upon anyone just for showing up.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

131. “Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

132. “It has never been easy for me to understand why people work so hard to create something beautiful, but then refuse to share it with anyone, for fear of criticism.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

133. “I believe in miracles, I believe in the Law of Attraction, but even I don’t think I’m big enough to manifest five Asian elephants cloaked in gold...”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

134. “Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

135. “Devotion is diligence without assurance. If faith were rational, it wouldn’t be by definition faith. Faith is walking face-first and full speed into the dark.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

136. “When something ends, let it end.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

137. “Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

138. “I found that eating alone by the window in a quiet restaurant is one of life’s greatest secret pleasures.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

139. “My whole life I’ve been an over-giver. My general operating policy has always been, ‘If it belongs to me, don’t worry: You can have it!’”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

140. “Oh, I just want what we all want: a comfortable couch, a nice beverage, a weekend of no distractions and a book that will stop time, lift me out of my quotidian existence and alter my thinking forever.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

141. “As for discipline – it’s important, but sort of overrated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

143. “Frustration is not an interruption of your process; frustration is the process.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

144. “You have no idea how strong my love is!”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

145. “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.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

146. “It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

147. “I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more that a deep existential angst the says, again and again, ‘I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

148. “Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

149. “Change is all about motion, motion is all about uncertainty and we are deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

150. “When a man who looks like Yoda hands you a prophecy, you have to respond.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert