Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Childlessness doesn't make people selfish; selfishness makes people selfish. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
People
Selfish
Selfishness
Related Quotes:
" And we have a little herb garden, which survived the winter thanks to global warming. It makes me feel like a cool, old Italian housewife, that I kept my rosemary alive outside all winter. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Garden
Cool
Alive
" I used to say, 'Man, I think I'd be a really good dad. I'll be a great provider. I'm funny; I'll go on trips with them - I'll do all sorts of stuff.' But the momming? I'm not made for that. I have a really good mom; I know what she put into it. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Think
Mom
Man
" Nobody until very recently would have thought that their husband was supposed to be their best friend, confidante, intellectual soul mate, co-parent, inspiration. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Friend
Soul
Best
" When I lost my friends, it was because I had used the power of giving on them recklessly. I swept into their lives with my big fat checkbook, and I erased years of obstacles for them overnight - but sometimes, in the process, I also accidentally erased years of dignity. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Process
Power
Obstacles
" But when it comes to writing the thing that I've sort of been thinking about lately, is why? You know, is it rational? Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing
Earth
Know
" 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
Feet
Dog
Book
" My writing practice taught me the important thing is steadfastness. It's not necessarily discipline. Discipline can become a prison. When your spiritual practices become another thing for you to be anxious about, they've lost their usefulness. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Practice
Spiritual
Writing
" My whole life I've been an over-giver. My general operating policy has always been, 'If it belongs to me, don't worry: You can have it!' "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Worry
You
Me
" I think sometimes we look at other people's marriages and we think they must always be so happy together. I don't know anybody who's married for a long time who hasn't somehow made room in their love story for the hate and resentment that they sometimes feel toward each other. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Happy
Time
Think
" My career started young and I was really ambitious, and then I had success and I hung out with people who were much older. I think I might have been temporally misplaced, so I thought I was 40. It was a premature midlife crisis. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Success
Think
People
" There were times, especially when I was traveling for 'Eat, Pray, Love,' when, I swear to God, I would feel this weight of my female ancestors, all those Swedish farmwives from beyond the grave who were like, 'Go! Go to Naples! Eat more pizza! Go to India, ride an elephant! Do it! Swim in the Indian Ocean. Read those books. Learn a language.' "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Ride
Love
Pizza
" I am far more of a loner than people would imagine. But I am the most gregarious and socially interactive loner you ever met. The thing is, I am fascinated by people's stories and I'm very talkative and can't ever say no to anything or anyone, so I tend to over-socialize, to give away too much of my time to the many people I adore. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
People
Say
Time
" Sureness is something like a neck brace, which we clamp around our lives, hoping to somehow protect ourselves from the frightening, constant whiplash of change. Sadly, the brace doesn't always hold. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Protect
Always
Change
" Men go into marriage with virtually no expectations whatsoever. Ten years later, the men are delightfully surprised to find out that it's actually kind of nice, and the women have sort of had to take a nose dive from what they thought it was going to be. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Men
Nice
Women
" I consider a good dinner party at our house to be where people drink and eat more than they're meant to. My husband is a really fantastic cook. His mother is Italian and if you walk into our house, we assume you're starving. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Walk
Good
Mother
" Despite having written five books, I worry that I have not written the right kinds of books, or that perhaps I have dedicated too much of my life to writing, and have therefore neglected other aspects of my being. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Life
Too Much
Worry
" When somebody has an enormous success in this culture, people start asking two questions, which are 'What are you doing now?' and 'How are you going to beat that?' And I have to say, I love the assumption that your intention is to beat yourself constantly - that you're in battle against yourself. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Culture
Love
People
" 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. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Age
Together
People
" I was a bartender for a long time, so I know how to make drinks, but I'm more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did, and why I get to produce more writing than she did, and why my marriage isn't in dire straits. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Time
Think
Writing
" Oh, I just want what we all want: a comfortable couch, a nice beverage, a weekend of no distractions and a book that will stop time, lift me out of my quotidian existence and alter my thinking forever. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Nice
Book
Weekend
" 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
Marriage
Love
Law
" You know, even I have had work or ideas come through me from a source that I honestly cannot identify. And what is that thing? And how are we to relate to it in a way that will not make us lose our minds, but, in fact, might actually keep us sane? "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Know
Lose
Me
" I've always been afraid of saying no to people because I don't want them to be disappointed and dislike me. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Want
Always
Me
" It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers, and I grew up in a very funny, conversational house and didn't have television. This small family farm was a bubble world that didn't have much to do with reality. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Family
Great
Sister
" I don't hate humanity and I'm not interested in people who do. Although, it's funny, actually, some of my favorite writers really do. Like Martin Amis. My dirty secret. 'London Fields' is one of my favorite books ever. And it's indefensible! But he's so funny... I forgive him everything. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Funny
Hate
Humanity
" There are times when the only access I have to the truest person that I am is when I'm alone and trying to solve a sentence. It's exciting, even when it's frustrating, even when I can't do it right. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Alone
Person
Only
" If you are given only one opportunity to speak, be certain your voice is heard. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Only
Speak
You
" I've always considered myself lucky that I do not have many passions. There's only one pursuit that I have ever truly loved, and that pursuit is writing. This means, conveniently enough, that I never had to search for my destiny; I only had to obey it. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Destiny
Search
Writing
" I push every day against forces that say you have to go faster, be more effective, be more productive, you have to constantly outdo yourself, you have to constantly outdo your neighbor - all of the stuff that creates an incredibly productive society, but also a very neurotic one. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Push
Day
You
" But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome - people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
People
Spirit
Believe