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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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Elizabeth Gilbert
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: July 18
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Waterbury
Connecticut
Left
Decades
Didn
Entire
Dream
Early
Part
Behinds
Writing
Behind
Life
Fiction
Word
Write
Decade

More quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

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There's no reason to keep a piece of furniture in your house that is so sacred and rare that you can't put your feet up on it and a dog can't jump up on it. Likewise, a book that sits on a shelf like a piece of porcelain, only to be admired, never to be read again, is a dead book.
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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I should just put it bluntly, because we're all sort of friends here now - it's exceedingly likely that my greatest success is behind me. Oh, so Jesus, what a thought! You know that's the kind of thought that could lead a person to start drinking gin at nine o'clock in the morning, and I don't want to go there.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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To my taste, the men in Rome are ridiculously, hurtfully, stupidly beautiful. More beautiful even than Roman women, to be honest. Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say-- no detail spared in the quest for perfection. They’re like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying,We understand how it is - we have one, too.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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We invented marriage. Couples invented marriage. We also invented divorce,mind you. And we invented infidelity,too, as well as romantic misery. In fact we invented the whole sloppy mess of love and intimacy and aversion and euphoria and failure. But most importantly of all, most subversively of all, most stubbornly of all, we invented privacy.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I went to Shea Stadium and used the men's room. Terrifying. There was this little kid looking at me through the crack [in the stall]. and I was like, If you tell anyone what you've seen...
Elizabeth Gilbert
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The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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According to the mystics, this search for divine bliss is the entire purpose of a human life. this is why we all chose to be born, and this is why all the suffering and pain of life on earth is worthwhile--just for the chance to experience this infinite love. And once you have found this divinity within, can you hold it? Because if you can...bliss.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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There's always another level up. There's always another ascension. More grace, more light, more generosity, more compassion, more to shed, more to grow.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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It has never been easy for me to understand why people work so hard to create something beautiful, but then refuse to share it with anyone, for fear of criticism.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Nothing is less efficient than perfectionism.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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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I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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A man that can cook you a proper meal that is like a weekday meal - which I think cannot be better than in the form of a roast chicken - that's the greatest.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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You were given life it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.
Elizabeth Gilbert