Quote

It is not we as individuals, then, who must bend uncomfortably around the institution of marriage rather, it is the institution of marriage that has to bend uncomfortably around us.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Elizabeth Gilbert
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: July 18
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Waterbury
Connecticut
Individuals
Institutions
Marriage
Rather
Individual
Around
Uncomfortably
Must
Bend
Institution

More quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

Image
Time -- when pursued like a bandit -- will behave like one always remaining one country or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping ou the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
Every try to take a toy away from a toddler? They don't like that, do they? They start kicking and screaming. Best way to take a toy away from a toddler is distract the kid, give him something else to play with. Instead of trying to forcefully take thoughts out of your mind, give your mind something better to play with.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
I said, It seems like you have fond feelings toward your ex-wife. Are you two still close? Nah, he said casually. She thinks I changed my name to Motherfucker.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
I feel like all this stuff that we make: books and art and music, all of it. There's this energy that circles the world that wants to be made manifest, and it is just looking for someone to come through. And it's dying for you to make it. And if you don't do it, it will go find somebody else.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
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
Image
I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
I was the baby of the family, but I was never babied, and that allowed me to take whatever artistic temperament I had and apply learned discipline. I was taught how to work. I think that's everything. Creativity and imagination alone are not going to get you there.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
That's what we're all sort of trying to do in our lives - to make the simplest things work out the best.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
One of these poems I wrote after having been here only a month. The other, I wrote this morning. In the space between the two poems, I have found acres of grace
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
What a large number of factors constitute a single human being! How very many layers we operate on, and how very many influences we receive from our minds, our bodies, our histories, our families, our cities, our souls and our lunches!
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
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
Image
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.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
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
Image
Whatever this feeling is - this is what I have been praying for. And this is also what I have been praying to.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
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.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
Ketut, why is life all crazy like this? I asked my medicine man the next day...So what can we do about the craziness of the world? Nothing. Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. This is nature of world. This is destiny. Worry about your craziness only-make you in peace.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
God is an experience of supreme love.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Image
Sometimes out hearts are broken so new light can get in.
Elizabeth Gilbert