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Your fear is the most boring thing about you.

Elizabeth Gilbert

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Elizabeth Gilbert
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: July 18
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Waterbury
Connecticut
Overcoming
Boring
Fear
Thing

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As a writer, you always read in two minds: You read as a reader and you enjoy it, and you look at it as a writer, and you just admire the architecture and the construction.
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I was full of a hot, powerful sadness and would have loved to burst into the comfort of tears, but tried hard not to, remembering something my Guru once said -- that you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead.
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Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family, which is why a child born today of unmarried parents in Sweden has a better chance of growing up in a house with both of his parents than a child born to a married couple in America. Here we revere the couple, there they revere the family.
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This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.
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No experience in this world has ever been cathartic without the willing participation of the individual. Life does not automatically bestow wisdom or growth upon anyone just for showing up.
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Sanity and clarity are more important for me and I'm willing to give up a lot of shimmer for it. I'm willing to have more boring friends, who are sane.
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I cannot overstate the power of libraries in my life.
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How could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn’t it?
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I can honestly say [that writing] is the best life there is, because you get to live within the realm of your own mind, and that is a profoundly rare human privilege.
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If you want to get to the castle, Groceries, you've got to swim the moat.
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When I read the article [in The New Yorker] by David Grann, I was very struck by people responding to the article, of people thinking I was such a hero and what a wonderful person I was, and I didn't feel that at all. I felt like I had very much, like Todd [Willingham], taken a path of self-preservation.
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Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.
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So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are absolutely correct, but in only one respect-only if they happen to be talking about Judaism.
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He was powerful and I died of love in his shadow.
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The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.
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What I think is amazing is not that 85% of people who get married under the age of 25 get divorced, it's that 15% of them stay together. How did they manage to pull that off? You almost can't wait too long. It's the single simplest measure to predict divorce.
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Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.
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Nobody's really paying that much attention to your massive personal dramas.
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Your fear is just as boring as mine is. Everyone's got the same one. It is not precious. It is not special. It is not singular to you. It's just the one we all got wired with when we came in. Focus on your unique qualities that deserve to be celebrated and put fear back in its place. Don't listen to it. Onward.
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Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.
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