Quote

Unfenced by law, the unmarried lover can quit a bad relationship at any time. But you - the legally married person who wants to escape doomed love - may soon discover that a significant portion of your marriage contract belongs to the State, and that it sometimes takes a very long while for the State to grant you your leave.

Elizabeth Gilbert

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Elizabeth Gilbert
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: July 18
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Waterbury
Connecticut
Long
Takes
Significant
Contracts
Time
Law
Lovers
Doomed
Unmarried
Love
State
Soon
Belongs
Legally
States
Married
Quit
Portion
May
Marriage
Lover
Contract
Persons
Relationship
Quitting
Grant
Person
Leave
Escape
Portions
Sometimes
Wants
Discover
Grants

More quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

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I never wanted to be the person that waited for a stranger to come to town - I wanted to be the stranger!
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I think sometimes we look at other people's marriages and we think they must always be so happy together. I don't know anybody who's married for a long time who hasn't somehow made room in their love story for the hate and resentment that they sometimes feel toward each other.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Equally disquieting are the times when we do make a choice, only to later feel as though we have murdered some other aspect of our being by settling on one single concrete decision.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome - people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I still can’t say whether I ever want children….I can only say how I feel now--grateful to be on my own. I also know that I won’t go forth and have children just in case I might regret missing it later in life I don’t think this is a strong enough motivation to bring more babies onto the earth.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I think it's wonderful when a love story begins with a great deal of romance and affection, passion and excitement, that's how it should be. But I don't necessarily know that it's the wisest thing in the world to expect that it ends there, or that it should, 30 years down the road, still look as it did on the night of your first kiss.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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This is what intimacy does to us over time. That's what a long marriage can do: It causes us to inherit and trade each other's stories. (p.237)
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Maybe it's just me but I would suspect that a man trying to impress a woman would be more likely to bring out the steak - I killed this for you, now I'm grilling it for you.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince I was the administrator of my own rescue.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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The beauty and variety of the natural world are merely the visible legacies of endless war.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, I honor the divinity that resides within me.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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we must take care of our families wherever we find them.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Embrace the glorious mess that you are
Elizabeth Gilbert
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It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers, and I grew up in a very funny, conversational house and didn't have television. This small family farm was a bubble world that didn't have much to do with reality.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentment and mortality.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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We alter and customize the thing every century, every generation, every day - both in the courts and in our own homes. And marriage accepts our modifications gracefully. Marriage adapts, evolves and (in a manner that I find miraculous and kind of inspiring) somehow keeps chugging along.
Elizabeth Gilbert