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I Wanted To Experience Both. I Wanted Worldly Enjoyment And Divine Transcendence. I Wanted What The Greeks Called Kalos Kai Agathos, The Singular Balance Of The Good And The Beautiful. I'd Been Missing Both During These Last Hard Years, Because Both Pleasure And Devotion Require A Stress-free Space In Which To Flourish And I'd Been Living In A Giant Trash Compactor Of Nonstop Anxiety. As For How To Balance The Urge For Pleasure Against The Longing For Devotion...well, Surely There Was A Way To Learn That Trick.

-Elizabeth Gilbert

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I Wanted To Experience

Elizabeth Gilbert

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I Wanted To Experience Both. I Wanted Worldly Enjoyment And Divine Transcendence. I Wanted What The Greeks Called Kalos Kai Agathos, The Singular Balance Of The Good And The Beautiful. I'd Been Missing Both During These Last Hard Years, Because Both Pleasure And Devotion Require A Stress-free Space In Which To Flourish And I'd Been Living In A Giant Trash Compactor Of Nonstop Anxiety. As For How To Balance The Urge For Pleasure Against The Longing For Devotion...well, Surely There Was A Way To Learn That Trick.

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Your Fear Is The Most Boring Thing About You.

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Oh My God, Baby, You Are In So Much Trouble.

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Fear Can Have A Voice, But It Doesn't Get A Vote.

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Soon You Start Craving That Intense Attention With The Hungry Obsession Of Any Junkie. When The Drug Is Withheld You Probably Turn Sick, Crazy And Depleted Not To Mention Resentful Of The Dealer Who Encourage This Addiction In The First Place But Who Now Refuses To Pony Up The Good Stuff Anymore Despite That You Know That He Has It Hidden Somewhere God Dammit Because You Know That He Used To Give It To You For Free.

A Fish And A Bird May Indeed Fall In Love, But Where Shall They Live?

Falling In Love

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You Never Know How A Good Quest Is Going To End.

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Lay Your Wishes Aside For A Spell, And Look Deep Into What You Believe About Yourself. Make Sure Your Beliefs About Your Own Life Are Anchored In Greatness, In Holiness, In Worth, In Grace, In Joy, In Excitement -in Internal Certainties Rather Than External Circumstances. Because That Belief? That's Where You're Heading, No Matter What It May Look Like On The Outside.

He Is Only Happy When He Can Maintain Himself - Mentally And Spiritually - At The Intersection Between A Vertical Line And Horizontal One, In A State Of Perfect Balance. For This, He Needs To Know Where He Is Located Every Moment, Both In His Relationship To The Divine And To His Family Here On Earth. If He Loses That Balance, He Loses His Power.

I Think When You Are An Aspiring Writer, You Must Write Every Day. It's Not As Though Anybody Will Call You Up On The Phone And Say, "i Understand You Are A Very Promising, Aspiring Writer And I'm Going To Give You This Assignment." You Have To Create It Yourself Or It's Never Going To Happen.

You Are Here And You Are Allowed To Be Here And Therefore You Are Allowed To Make Decisions About Yourself And The People In Your Life; Rather Than Sort Of Backing Up And Making Sure It's Okay With Everybody At Every Turn.

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.

I See A Lot Of Women Who Can't Travel When They're Young, And Then Their Kids Grow Up And They Become Amazing Adventurers. Travel Is Not Only For The Young. Sometimes It's Wasted On The Young.

[saint Anthony] Said, In His Solitude, He Sometimes Encountered Devils Who Looked Like Angels, And Other Times He Found Angels Who Looked Like Devils. When Asked How He Could Tell The Difference, The Saint Said That You Can Only Tell Which Is Which By The Way You Feel After The Creature Has Left Your Company.

Problem Is, You Can’t Accept That His Relationship Had A Real Short Shelf Life. You’re Like A Dog At The Dump, Baby – You’re Just Lickin’ At The Empty Tin Can, Trying To Get More Nutrition Out Of It. And If You’re Not Careful, That Can’s Gonna Get Stuck On Your Snout Forever And Make Your Life Miserable. So Drop It.” “but I Love Him.” “so Love Him.” “but I Miss Him.” “so Miss Him. Send Him Some Love And Light Every Time You Think About Him, Then Drop It.

There's This Great Kind Of Spooky Dance That Happens That I Can't Access Any Other Way. I Think Most Of Us Are Given Kind Of One Pathway To That Dance, And That's Why I'm A Writer. It's The Only Way I Can Get There. I Can't Do It Through Art, I Can't Do It Through Singing, I Can't Do It Through Mothering, I Can't Do It Through Invention.

A Woman's Place Is In The Kitchen...sitting In A Comfortable Chair, With Her Feet Up, Drinking A Glass Of Wine And Watching Her Husband Cook Dinner.

If You're Going To Answer The Call And You're Going To Transform And You're Going To Change, Get Ready. It Is Not A Day At The Beach.

The Appreciation Of Pleasure Can Be The Anchor Of Humanity.

I Think There's More Real In The Unreal Than There Is In The Real.

I Consider A Good Dinner Party At Our House To Be Where People Drink And Eat More Than They're Meant To.

God Wants Us To Be In Joy, God Wants Us To Be Happy.

Given That Life Is So Short, Do I Really Want To Spend One-ninetieth Of My Remaining Days On Earth Reading Edward Gibbon?

We Were Taught To Be Dependable, Responsible, The Top Of Our Classes At School, The Most Organized And Efficient Babysitters In Town, The Very Miniature Models Of Our Hardworking Farmer/nurse Mother, A Pair Of Junior Swiss Army Knives, Born To Multitask.

When You're Lost In Those Woods, It Sometimes Takes You A While To Realize That You Are Lost.

Keep Showing Up For Your Side Of The Job And Give Genius A Chance To Do Its Part.

Women Have Always Been More Critical Of Marriage Than Men. The Great Mysterious Irony Of It Is - At Least It's The Stereotype - That Women Want To Get Married And Men Are Trying To Avoid It. Marriage Doesn't Benefit Women As Much As Men, And It Never Has. And Women, Once They Are Married, Become Very Critical Of Marriages In A Way That Men Don't.

When It Comes To Women, Get Your Life Together First. Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First. Figure Out Who You Are. Mature. And Then Go Find Somebody To Share That Life With.

Deep Grief Sometimes Is Almost Like A Specific Location, A Coordinate On A Map Of Time. When You Are Standing In That Forest Of Sorrow, You Cannot Imagine That You Could Ever Find Your Way To A Better Place. But If Someone Can Assure You That They Themselves Have Stood In That Same Place, And Now Have Moved On, Sometimes This Will Bring Hope

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.

Eat Pray Love Book

Best Eat Pray Love

This Person Had Arrived, He Had Illuminated Her, He Had Ensorcelled Her With Notions Of Miracle And Beauty, He Had Both Understood And Misunderstood Her, He Had Married Her, He Had Broken Her Heart, He Had Looked Upon Her With Those Sad And Hopeless Eyes, He Had Accepted His Banishment, And Now He Was Gone. What A Stark And Stunning Thing Was Life- That Such A Cataclysm Can Enter And Depart So Quickly, And Leave Such Wreckage Behind!

I Think You Have Every Right To Cherry-pick When It Comes To Moving Your Spirit And Finding Peace In God. You Take Whatever Works From Wherever You Can Find It, And You Keep Moving Toward The Light.

We Gallop Through Our Lives Like Circus Performers Balancing On Two Speeding Side-by-side Horses--one Foot Is On The Horse Called "fate," The Other On The Horse Called "free Will." And The Question You Have To Ask Every Day Is--which Horse Is Which? Which Horse Do I Need To Stop Worrying About Because It's Not Under My Control, And Which Do I Need To Steer With Concentrated Effort?

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The Whole Sphere Of Air That Surrounds Us, Alma, Is Alive With Invisible Attractions — Electric, Magnetic, Fiery And Thoughtful. There Is A Universal Sympathy All Around Us… When We Cease All Argument And Debate — Both Internal And External — Our True Questions Can Be Heard And Answered…that Is The Gathering Of Magic.

The World Needs Women Who Stop Asking For Permission From The Principal. Permission To Live Their Lives As They Deeply Know They Often Should. I Think We Still Look To Authority Figures For Validation, Recognition, Permission.

I Won The Argument Against The Knife That Night, But Barely. I Had Some Other Good Ideas Around That Time--about How Jumping Off A Building Or Blowing My Brains Out With A Gun Might Stop The Suffering. But Something About Spending A Night With A Knife In My Hand Did It. The Next Morning I Called My Friend Susan As The Sun Came Up, Begged Her To Help Me. I Don't Think A Woman In The Whole History Of My Family Had Ever Done That Before, Had Ever Sat In The Middle Of The Road Like That And Said, In The Middle Of Her Life, "i Cannot Walk Another Step Further--somebody Has To Help Me.

Childlessness Doesn't Make People Selfish; Selfishness Makes People Selfish.

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.

Longing To Travel While You Are Already Traveling Is, I Admit, A Kind Of Greedy Madness

Teach Your Heart That This Is Destiny

I Believe In A Magnificent God.

There’s A Crack (or Cracks) In Everyone…that’s How The Light Of God Gets In.

Until I Can Feel As Ecstatic About Having A Baby As I Felt About Going To New Zealand To Search For Giant Squid, I Cannot Have A Baby.

The Number 108 Is Held To Be The Most Auspicious, A Perfect Three-digit Multiple Of Three, Its Components Adding Up To 9, Which Is Three Threes. And 3, Of Course, Is The Number Representing Supreme Balance.

For Most Of Western Civilization There Was No Real Division Between The Realms Of Science, Divinity, And Artistic Endeavor - They Were Just Three Strands Of The Same Braid, All Of Them Pulling Toward The Same Beautiful Desire: To Try To Understand The Workings Of This Curious And Beautiful World. There Were Many People Who Would Have Called Themselves All Three Things At Once: Men Of God, Men Of Science, Men Of The Arts.

In A World Of Disorder And Disaster And Fraud, Sometimes Only Beauty Can Be Trusted. Only Artistic Excellence Is Incorruptible. Pleasure Cannot Be Bargained Down. And Sometimes The Meal Is The Only Currency That Is Real.

What Are You Willing To Give Up, In Order To Become Who You Really Need To Be?

I Guess What I Want To Learn Is How To Live In This World And Enjoy Its Delights But Also Devote Myself To God.

Nobody Wants To Do It - Not Real Change, Not Soul Change, Not The Painful Molecular Change Required To Truly Become Who You Need To Be. Nobody Ever Does Real Transformation For Fun. Nobody Ever Does It On A Dare. You Do It Only When Your Back Is So Far Against The Wall That You Have No Choice Anymore.

I Think A Lot Of People Who Feel As Though They Desperately Want To Be Married Oftentimes Simply Desperately Want To Have A Wedding.

Returning To Writing Fiction After 13 Years Away From It. Returning To The Rootstock Of My Whole Life As A Writer. It's What I Had Wanted To Be For My Entire Life, Since I Can Remember, Since My Particular Time Immemorial. It's How I Got My Start As A Writer.

Yoga Is The Effort To Experience One's Divinity Personally And Then To Hold On To That Experience Forever.

What Happens And What You Encounter, What You Collide With - It's So Exciting And Revealing About How Much More Interesting And Tricky The Universe Is Than We Think In Our Daily Lives.

Do You Think There's Any Way Humans Can Love Each Other Without Complication?

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.

I Believe In Miracles, I Believe In The Law Of Attraction, But Even I Don't Think I'm Big Enough To Manifest Five Asian Elephants Cloaked In Gold.

That Competition And The Struggle For Existence Is The Mechanism Behind This State Of Perpetual Change.

The Nineteenth Century Was The Last Moment In History When A Relatively Educated Layperson Could Follow What Was Going On In The World Of Science And Invention To A Wide Degree. Also, There Were No "professionals". This Was A Time When Amateur Explorers, Naturalists And Enthusiasts Were Are Still Making Major Contributions To Progress.

When Catherine Told Me About This (tragedy Nearby), I Could Only Say, Shocked, "dear God, That Family Needs Grace." She Replied Firmly, "that Family Needs Casseroles," And Then Proceeded To Organize The Entire Neighborhood Into Bringing That Family Dinner, In Shifts, Every Single Night, For An Entire Year. I Do Not Know If My Sister Fully Recognizes That This _is_ Grace.

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.

That Is Who Barack Obama Is - A Person Of Admirable Character - And That Is Who He Has Remained For Me Over These Last Four Years. I Have Not Agreed With His Every Decision, But Never Once Have I Seen Him Break His Cool, Lose His Composure, Or Abandon His Insightful Perspective - Even During The Most Serious And/or Absurd National Disasters.

I Wanted To Experience Both. I Wanted Worldly Enjoyment And Divine Transcendence. I Wanted What The Greeks Called Kalos Kai Agathos, The Singular Balance Of The Good And The Beautiful. I'd Been Missing Both During These Last Hard Years, Because Both Pleasure And Devotion Require A Stress-free Space In Which To Flourish And I'd Been Living In A Giant Trash Compactor Of Nonstop Anxiety. As For How To Balance The Urge For Pleasure Against The Longing For Devotion...well, Surely There Was A Way To Learn That Trick.

The Four Virtues A Person Needs In Order To Be Safe And Happy In Life: Intelligence, Friendship, Strength And (i Love This One) Poetry.

I Am Alone, I Am All Alone, I Am Completely Alone. Grasping This Reality, I Let Go Of My Bag, Drop To My Knees And Press My Forehead Against The Floor. There, I Offer Up To The Universe A Fervent Prayer Of Thanks. First In English. Then In Italian. And Then - Just To Get The Point Across - In Sanskrit.

Maybe [artistry] Doesn't Have To Be Quite So Full Of Anguish If You Never Happened To Believe, In The First Place, That The Most Extraordinary Aspects Of Your Being Came From You. But Maybe If You Just Believed That They Were On Loan To You From Some Unimaginable Source For Some Exquisite Portion Of Your Life To Be Passed Along When You're Finished ... It Starts To Change Everything.

True Wisdom Gives The Only Possible Answer At Any Given Moment, And That Night, Going Back To Bed Was The Only Possible Answer.

When You're Lost In Those Woods, It Sometimes Takes You A While To Realize That You Are Lost. For The Longest Time, You Can Convince Yourself That You've Just Wandered Off The Path, That You'll Find Your Way Back To The Trailhead Any Moment Now. Then Night Falls Again And Again, And You Still Have No Idea Where You Are, And It's Time To Admit That You Have Bewildered Yourself So Far Off The Path That You Don't Even Know From Which Direction The Sun Rises Anymore.

In 1954, Pope Pius Xi, Of All People, Sent Some Vatican Delegates On A Trip To Libya With These Written Instructions: "do Not Think That You Are Going Among Infidels. Muslims Attain Salvation, Too. The Ways Of Providence Are Infinite.

[italian Men] Are Like Show Poodles. Sometimes They Look So Good I Want To Applaud.

Then My Mother Shocked Me. She Said, " All Those Things That You Want From Your Relationship, Liz? I Have Always Wanted Those Things Too." [she] Showed Me The Handful Of Bullets She'd Had To Bite Over The Decades In Order To Stay Happily Married (and She Was Happily Married...) To My Father. "you Have To Understand How Little I Was Raised To Expect That I Desired In Life, Honey. Remember- I Come From A Different Time And Place... And You Have To Understand How Much I Love Your Father.

You Are Accidentally Leaving Your Dna All Over Everything In A Novel Because It's All Coming From You.

Everything Good I've Ever Gotten In Life, I Only Got Because I Gave Something Else Up.

I Decide Every Day That I Love Creativity Enough To Accept That Fear Will Always Come With It. And I Talk To Fear All The Time, Speaking To It With Love And Respect, Saying To It: “i Know That You Are Fear, And That Your Job Is To Be Afraid. And You Do Your Job Really Well! I Will Never Ask You To Leave Me Alone Or To Be Silent, Because You Have A Right To Speak Your Own Voice, And I Know That You Will Never Leave Me Alone Or Be Silent, Anyhow. But I Need You To Understand That I Will Always Choose Creativity Over You.

You Might Get Nothing Out Of It At All Except A Beautiful, Long Life Where All You Did Was Follow Your Gorgeous Curiosity. And That Should Be Enough Too.

My Heart Was Broken So Badly Last Time That It Still Hurts. Isn't That Crazy? To Still Have A Broken Heart Almost Two Years After A Love Story Ends?

I've Always Thought Of My Writing As A Spiritual Practice. But I Think That Fiction Is The Most Supernatural Kind Of Writing That You Can Do - Because Of The Ways That The Real And The Unreal Weave Together To Create Something That Feels More True Than Anything.

Sometimes Beauty Needs A Bit Of Ignoring, To Properly Come Into Being.

Maturity Brings - Among Other Things - The Ability To Sustain And Survive Enormous Contradictions And Disappointments.

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.

The Health Of The Planet Is Affected By The Health Of Every Individual On It !

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.

Felipe And I, As We Discover To Our Delight, Are A Perfectly Matched, Genetically Engineered Belly-to-belly Success Story.

It Is Not We As Individuals, Then, Who Must Bend Uncomfortably Around The Institution Of Marriage; Rather, It Is The Institution Of Marriage That Has To Bend Uncomfortably Around Us.

Here Was Something I Already Knew To Be True About Myself: Just As There Are Some Wives Who Will Occasionally Need A Break From Their Husbands In Order To Visit A Spa For The Weekend With Their Girlfriends, I Will Always Be The Sort Of Wife Who Occasionally Needs A Break From Her Husband In Order To Visit Cambodia. Just For A Few Days!

The Fantasy Of The Wedding Day Is That It Represents Undeniable Public And Private Truth That You Have Been Chosen. For That One Day, You Are The Most Valuable Creature In The World - A Treasure, A Princess, A Prize.

When You Have Only Two Minutes To Say Good-bye To The Person You Love Most In The World, And You Don’t Know When You’ll See Each Other Again, You Can Become Logjammed With The Effort To Say And Do And Settle Everything At Once.

Bhuta Ia, Dewa Ia. (bali Expression Meaning Man Is A Demon, Man Is A God.)

You Know, It’s The Same Thing As The Question Of Free Will And Destiny, The Question Of Creativity - You, The Artist, You’re Not The Puppet Of The Piano, You’re Not The Puppet Of The Muse, But You’re Not Its Master, Either. It’s A Relationship, It’s A Conversation, And All It Wants Is To Be Treated With Respect And Dignity - And It Will Return Ten Thousand Times Over.

As Far As We Know, We Are The Only Species On The Planet Who Have Been Given The Gift-or Curse, Perhaps-of Awareness About Our Own Mortality. Everything Here Eventually Dies; We're Just The Lucky Ones Who Get To Think About This Fact Every Day.

The Only Thing More Unthinkable Than Leaving Was Staying; The Only Thing More Impossible Than Staying Was Leaving.

Creative People Always Suffer From Depression Because We're So Super Sensitive And Special?

Learning How To Discipline Your Speech Is A Way Of Preventing Your Energies From Spilling Out Of You Through The Rupture Of Your Mouth, Exhausting You And Filling The World With Words, Words, Words Instead Of Serenity, Peace And Bliss.

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