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" 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
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" I've come to realize that the contemporary creative culture is not generating the best possible outcome. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Culture
Creative
Best
" 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
Family
America
Parents
" 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
" When I look at my life and the lives of my female friends these days - with our dizzying number of opportunities and talents - I sometimes feel as though we are all mice in a giant experimental maze, scurrying around frantically, trying to find our way through. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Friends
Opportunities
Life
" If you are given only one opportunity to speak, be certain your voice is heard. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Only
Speak
You
" I love my friends and family, but I also love it when they can't find me and I can spend all day reading or walking all alone, in silence, eight thousand miles away from everyone. All alone and unreachable in a foreign country is one my most favorite possible things to be. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Silence
Day
Alone
" I don't think you can come into your wisdom until you have made mistakes on your own skin and felt them in reality of your own life. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Think
Reality
Mistakes
" 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
" 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
" 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
" When I diagnose my depression now, I think it was partially about saying goodbye to these kids that I always expected to have but already knew that I wouldn't. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Now
Depression
Think
" 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
" 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
" 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
" If I could read while I was driving, showering, socializing or sleeping, I would do it. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Sleeping
If I Could
Driving
" 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
" If life gives you lemons, don't settle for simply making lemonade - make a glorious scene at a lemonade stand. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Make
Stand
You
" Nothing in the last few years has dazzled me more than Hilary Mantel's 'Wolf Hall,' which blew the top of my head straight off. I've read it three times, and I'm still trying to figure out how she put that magnificent thing together. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
She
Trying
Together
" I think that people who live in cultures without quite so much privilege, opportunity or grandiosity have a little bit more respect for the workings of destiny, and the limitations that people can find themselves in through no fault of their own. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Live
Opportunity
Find
" I think it's unfortunate that there exists only one path in America to complete social legitimacy, and that is marriage. I think, for instance, that it would be far easier for Americans to elect a black president or a female president than an unmarried president. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Marriage
Black
Think
" These days I settle for feeling only 85 percent sure about most things, most of the time. I believe this is keeping me sane, and I also believe that it's keeping me human. In fact, I'm 85 percent sure of it. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Believe
Me
I Believe
" You know, I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche. It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Think
Responsibility
Creative
" Creativity itself doesn't care at all about results - the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Destiny
Love
Work
" If I am to truly become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
My Own
Become
Own
" 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
" 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
Start
Thought
Success
" 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. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
Boring
Important
Clarity
" 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
" Childlessness doesn't make people selfish; selfishness makes people selfish. "
Elizabeth Gilbert
People
Selfish
Selfishness