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50 Astonishing Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

Elizabeth Gilbert is the bestselling author of the book, ‘Eat, Pray, and Love.’ As a novelist and memoirist, Gilbert studied Political Science from New York University and wrote a series of short stories. Here is a look at some of the best Elizabeth Gilbert quotes ever documented.

“A woman’s place is in the kitchen…sitting in a comfortable chair, with her feet up, drinking a glass of wine and watching her husband cook dinner.”

“Childlessness doesn’t make people selfish; selfishness makes people selfish.”

“Creativity itself doesn’t care at all about results – the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless.”

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

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

“God dwells within you, as you.”

“God is an experience of supreme love.”

“Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it’s what you want before you commit.”

“I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”

“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.”

“I think a lot of people who feel as though they desperately want to be married oftentimes simply desperately want to have a wedding.”

“I think I deserve something beautiful.”

“I’m here. I love you. I don’t 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 don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s 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.”

“If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian…I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.”

“I’m choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.”

“In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.”

“It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away.”

“Italian men are like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.”

“Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.”

“Love renders all of our plans and all of our hopes a gamble.”

“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.”

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

“Maybe the difference between first marriage and second marriage is that the second time at least you know you are gambling.”

“Mine is just a simple old human story – of one person trying, with great rigor and discipline, to comprehend her personal relationship with divinity.”

“My writing practice taught me the important thing is steadfastness. It’s not necessarily discipline. Discipline can become a prison. When your spiritual practices become another thing for you to be anxious about, they’ve lost their usefulness.”

“Nobody until very recently would have thought that their husband was supposed to be their best friend, confidante, intellectual soul mate, co-parent, inspiration.”

“Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance.”

“Plant an expectation; reap a disappointment.”

“Real, sane, mature love—the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after school—is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect.”

“Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing…”

“The act of quiet night-time talking, illustrates for me more than anything else the curious alchemy of companionship.”

“The day is ending. It’s time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, Let go.”

“The love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.”

“There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.”

“These days I settle for feeling only 85 percent sure about most things, most of the time. I believe this is keeping me sane, and I also believe that it’s keeping me human. In fact, I’m 85 percent sure of it.”

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

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

“This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.”

“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”

“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced”

“When I diagnose my depression now, I think it was partially about saying goodbye to these kids that I always expected to have but already knew that I wouldn’t.”

“When I look at my life and the lives of my female friends these days – with our dizzying number of opportunities and talents – I sometimes feel as though we are all mice in a giant experimental maze, scurrying around frantically, trying to find our way through.”

“When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It’s safe. Let go.”

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

“You make some big grandoise decision about what you need to do, or who you need to be, and then circumstances arise that immediately reveal to you how little you understood about yourself.”

“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. That’s the only thing you should be trying to control.”

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

“Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”

Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the success and failure that is needed to keep driving creativity. The author of the book ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ Gilbert shares some of her outlook on how failure and success can equally disorient the individual.

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