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Every day when you wake up, ask yourself, 'What do I really, really, really want? ' You have to say really, really, really, otherwise you won't believe it.

Elizabeth Gilbert

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Elizabeth Gilbert
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: July 18
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Waterbury
Connecticut
Believe
Really
Wake
Otherwise
Asks
Every

More quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

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For the entire decade of my 30s and the early part of my 40s, I didn't write a word of fiction. I just left behind a dream of my life.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I'm not a big Austen reader. I wouldn't say I dislike her, but if I had to choose between her and Eliot to bring to a desert island, it would definitely be Eliot.
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As I got older, I discovered that nothing within me cried out for a baby. My womb did not seem to have come equipped with that famously ticking clock. Unlike so many of my friends, I did not ache with longing whenever I saw an infant. (Though I did ache with longing, it is true, whenever I saw a good used-book shop)
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I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either, but profound happiness, even soaring happiness. And what could possibly bring a person more soaring happiness than romantic love.
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I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.
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Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.
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It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainment.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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It seems obvious that there comes period in your life when you have to learn to say no to things you don't want to do. But the biggest trickiest lesson in holding on the stalwart committment to your creativity is learning how to say no to the things you do want to do.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Traveling-to-a-place energy and living-in-a-place energy are two fundamentally different energies
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Life's metaphors are God's instructions.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Every few years, I think, 'Maybe now I'm finally smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand 'Ulysses.'' So I pick it up and try it again. And by page 10, as always, I'm like, 'What the hell?'
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I want to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. It was only later, after admitting this dream, that I noticed the happy coincidence that all these countries begin with the letter I. A fairly auspicious sign, it seemed, on a voyage of self-discovery.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Our relationship now thoroughly ruined, with even civility destroyed between us, all I wanted anymore was the door.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I'm not particularly inventive. If you left me in а room and told me to write a novel, I wouldn't be able to do it. But if you gave me two years in a public library around the corner, I could. It all comes from sort of mixing the true and the invented. I'm not a fabulist. I'm more of a reporter.
Elizabeth Gilbert