Quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying, Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I am voicing in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding. There is a reason that we refer to leaps-of-faith, because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I dont care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove that their faith is rational; it isnt. If they were rational, it wouldnt be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face first and full speed into the dark.

A family in my sisters neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only say, shocked, Dear God, that family needs grace. She replied firmly, That family needs casseroles, and 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.

My friend Bob, who is both a student of Yoga and a neuroscientist, told me that he was always agitated by this idea of the chakras, that he wanted to actually see them in a dissected human body in order to believe they existed. But after a particularly transcendent meditative experience, he came away with a new understanding of it. He said,Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But they are both equally true

You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. Thats the only thing you should be trying to control.

Someone has to write all those stories: why not me?

Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with ones own senses, and THIS makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captain of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors... 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.

I know a woman who gets tattoos all the time. She acquires new tattoos the way I might buy a new pair of earrings. She wakes up in the morning and announces, I think Ill go get a new tattoo today. If you ask her what kind of tattoo shes planning on getting, shell say casually, I dunno….Ill figure it out when I get to the tattoo shop. Or Ill just let the artist surprise me.Now, this woman is not a teenager. Shes a grown woman with adult children, and she runs a successful business. Shes also really cool, uniquely beautiful, and one of the freest spirits Ive ever met.When I asked her how she could mark up her body so casually and so permanently, she said, Oh, but you misunderstand: Its not permanent! Its temporary.Confused, I asked, You mean, all your tattoos are temporary?She smiled like a sexy rock n roll Buddha and said, No, honey. My tattoos are permanent — its my BODY thats temporary. And so is yours. Were here on earth for a very short while. I just want to decorate my temporary self as playfully and beautifully as I can, while I still have time.I love this so much, I cant even tell you.I myself am not covered with tattoos. (Although I do have two of them. Before I went traveling for Eat, Pray, Love, I had two words written into my forearms in white ink: COURAGE and COMPASSION.) But I do want to live the most vividly decorated temporary life I can. I dont just mean physically. I mean emotionally, spiritual, intellectually. I dont want to be afraid of bright colors, or big love, or major decisions, or new experiences, or risky creative endeavors, or sudden changes, or even great failure.

I dont sit around waiting for passion to strike me. I keep working steadily, because I believe it is our privilege as humans to keep making things. Most of all, I keep working because I trust that creativity is always trying to find me, even when I have lost sight of it.

I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.

[Saint Anthony] said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company.

Religion is for those who dont want to go to hell, and spirituality is for those who have already been there.

In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite.

You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.

What if we just acknowledged that we have a bad relationship, and we stuck it out, anyway? What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we cant live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together -- in misery, but happy to not be apart.

With each reunion (we) had to learn each other all over again. There was always that nervous moment at the airport when I would stand there waiting for him to arrive, wondering, Will I still know him? Will he still know me?

That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.

Listen to the whispers or soon you will be listening to the screams.

Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth reading Edward Gibbon?

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? Its because he doesnt care! Hes in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery. I am so tired of saying no, waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before, counting every calorie I consumed so I know just how much self loathing to take into the shower. Im going for it. I have no interest in being obese, Im just through with the guilt. So this is what Im going to do, Im going to finish this pizza, and then we are going to go watch the soccer game, and tomorrow we are going to go on a little date and buy ourselves some bigger jeans.

My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: I want a spiritual teacher.