Quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another persons body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.

Loneliness watches and sights, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over... himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He’s going to make me sleep with him again tonight, i just know it.

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

The child is taught form earliest consciousness that she has these four brothers with her in the world wherever she goes, and that they will always look after her. The brothers inhabit the four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and poetry. The brothers can be called upon in any critical situation for rescue and assistance. When you die, your four spirit brothers collet your soul and bring you to heaven.

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

We dont realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.

This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page:Im here. I love you. I dont care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it - I will love you through that, as well. If you dont need the medication, I will love you, too. Theres nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

Step forward out of your own lingering residual sense of smallness, take up every inch of life that is your blessed inheritance, and DO YOUR THING.

Then again, you cannot stop the flood of desire as it moves through the world, inappropriate though it may sometimes be. It is the prerogative of all humans to make ludicrous choices, to fall in love with the most unlikely of partners, and to set themselves up for the most predicatable of calamities.

There will be two ships sailing, but youll be on the Resolution, with Cook himself. Never put yourself in his way. Never speak to him. And if you do speak to him, which you must never do, certainly do to speak to him in the manner in which you have sometimes spoken to me. He will not find it as diverting as I do.

I saw the apartment almost as a sanatorium, a hospice clinic for my own recovery. I painted the walls in the warmest colors I could find and bought myself flowers every week, as if I were visiting myself in the hospital.

You learn to smile even in you liver?Even in my lire, Ketut. Big smile in my liver.

I think there are writers who take a quieter approach to their work — one that is just about respectfully showing up for your vocation day after day, steadily doing your best, and letting go of the results. Not going to war against anyone else, or against their talents, or against themselves.

When Catherine told me about this (tragedy nearby), I could only say, shocked, Dear God, that family needs grace.She replied firmly, That family needs casseroles, and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this _is_ grace.

We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses--one foot is on the horse called fate, the other on the horse called free will. And the question you have to ask every day is--which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because its not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I eat and read and study. i can choose how Im going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life - whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on the occasions when I cant rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because Im feeling too damn sorry for myself, I can choose to keep trying to change my outlook). I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom share my body and life and money and energy with.

I wanted to call a time out, to demand that everybody just STOP until I could understand everything.

Then I give her a grim shake of my head and say aloud, This blows ass. She nods sympathetically. She doesnt understand, but of course, in her way she understands completely.

Because I know something that you dont know. I know that this is the worst experience of your life, but I also know that someday youll move past it and youll be fine. And helping somebody likej you through the worst experience of her life is incredibly gratifying.