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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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Elizabeth Gilbert
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: July 18
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Waterbury
Connecticut
Enough
Pick
Trying
Picks
Every
Finally
Years
Pages
Always
Smart
Think
Hell
Ulysses
Thinking
Maybe
Sophisticated
Like
Understand
Page

More quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

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Being a woman did not look enviable to me, even when it looked admirable. It looked like nonstop sacrifice and service. Because it was. Being a woman seemed vulnerable and sad. Even the strong women I knew - and they were all strong - had earned their strength through enduring huge disappointments and tremendous struggles.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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
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There is a reason they call God a presence - because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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In Venice in the Middle Ages there was once a profession for a man called a codega--a fellow you hired to walk in front of you at night with a lit lantern, showing you the way, scaring off thieves and demons, bringing you confidence and protection through the dark streets.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, I honor the divinity that resides within me.
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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So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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As somebody who, in my second marriage, insisted on a prenuptial agreement, I can also testify that sometimes it is an act of love to chart the exit strategy before you enter the union, in order to make sure that not only you, but your partner as well, knows that there will be no World War III should hearts and minds, for any sad reason, change.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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
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When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost.
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 am the planet's most affectionate life-form, something like the cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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
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I'm so excited about school. I'm such a shameless student. I laid my clothes out last night, just like I did before my first day of first grade, with my patent leather shoes and my new lunch box. I hope the teacher will like me :)
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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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We set up one rule in our house, which is, 'Guests of guests cannot bring guests.' That rule was required because that happened one weekend, and we finally said, 'Okay, you know what? That's a little too much.'
Elizabeth Gilbert