Elizabeth Gilbert quotes: awesomeness from the author.
“Success isn’t about acquiring things, it’s about discovering your life purpose and following the call.”
“True power comes from standing in your own truth and walking your own path.”
“Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.”
“Tis better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else’s perfectly.”
“I have a rigid self-accountability. You have to work hard.”
“You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.”
“The only boring people I know are bored people.”
“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.”
“Watch for the people whose eyes light up when you talk about your dream. Those are the people you keep.”
“You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That’s the only thing you should be trying to control.”
“Some days are meant to be counted, others are meant to be weighed.”
“If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.”
“When you want to do something creative and you want to do something new, you have to start with the thing that’s making you want to jump up out of bed in the morning.”
“Creativity asks you to enter realms with uncertain outcomes. People want to create a safe life for themselves so they try to live without fear and they end up killing their creativity in the process.”
“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.”
“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.'”
“Creativity is a scavenger hunt. It’s your obligation to pay attention to clues, to the thing that gives you that little tweak.”
“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner—continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you—is a fine art, in and of itself.”
“We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we are afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.”
“Mistakes will be made. Failure will occur. You pick yourself up and carry on.”
“A glorious failure can sometimes be more life affirming than a cautious win.”
“Fear can have a voice, but it doesn’t get a vote. Your fear is the most boring thing about you. There’s nothing special about your fear.”
“Your fear is just as boring as mine is. Everyone’s got the same one. It is not precious. It is not special. It is not singular to you. It’s just the one we all got wired with when we came in. Focus on your unique qualities that deserve to be celebrated and put fear back in its place. Don’t listen to it. Onward.”
“Change is all about motion. Motion is all about uncertainty and we are deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty.”
“What worked yesterday doesn’t always work today.”
“If life gives you lemons, don’t settle for simply making lemonade; make a glorious scene at a lemonade stand.”
“I’d learned enough from life’s experiences to understand that destiny’s interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn’t take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity.”
“You know the old adage: plant an expectation, reap a disappointment.”
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be.”
“Nothing is less efficient than perfectionism.”
“What are you willing to give up, in order to become who you really need to be?”
“I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullsh*t.”
“There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I’m going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life—whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.”
“A true soulmate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”
“The world is like a dropped pie most of the time. Don’t kill yourself trying to put it back together. Just grab a fork and eat some of it off the floor. Then carry on.”
“Embrace the glorious mess that you are.”
“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.”
“Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.”
“Everything good I’ve ever gotten in life, I only got because I gave something else up.”
“I am determined to make the most of this life that I have, dammit. It’s that kind of stubbornness I think we all need more of.”
“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.”
“Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it’s not something where, if you missed it by age 19, you’re finished. It’s never too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world, at any age. At least try.”
“I can honestly say that writing is the best life there is, because you get to live within the realm of your own mind, and that is a profoundly rare human privilege.”
“Someone has to write all those stories: why not me? My work is incredibly important to me personally. It brings me joy and it brings me life and it brings me meaning. It doesn’t necessarily have to be important to the people who read it.”
“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.”
“I believe that, if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression, that you should take on this work like a holy calling.”
“Balance is not letting anyone love you less than you love yourself.”
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”
“The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That’s where you need to go.”
“Teach your heart that this is destiny.”
“If you’re brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.”
“When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life. With great joy.”
“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.”
“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.”
“That’s what we’re all sort of trying to do in our lives—to make the simplest things work out the best.”
“And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot yet do today?”
Related: Brené Brown quotes.
