Elizabeth Gilbert: I wonder if I am capable of being somebody’s sun, s...

The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.

Elizabeth Gilbert

who-i-am may ideas

Bhuta ia, dewa ia. (Bali expression meaning Man is a demon, man is a god.)

Elizabeth Gilbert

demon expression men

It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainment.

Elizabeth Gilbert

soul praying helping

Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying","We understand how it is - we have one, too.

Elizabeth Gilbert

empathy encounters people

It was like time would stop, and the dancer would sort of step through some kind of portal and he wasn't doing anything different than he had ever done, 1,000 nights before, but everything would align. And all of a sudden, he would no longer appear to be merely human. He would be lit from within, and lit from below and all lit up on fire with divinity. And when this happened, back then, people knew it for what it was, you know, they called it by it's name. They would put their hands together and they would start to chant, "Allah, Allah, Allah, God God, God." That's God, you know.

Elizabeth Gilbert

fire night hands

Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don't really want to live in it.

Elizabeth Gilbert

venice want beautiful

This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.

Elizabeth Gilbert

healing night peace

In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted.

Elizabeth Gilbert

disaster sometimes world

But vegetarians can eat this...Because intestines aren't even meat, Liz. They're just sh$*.

Elizabeth Gilbert

liz vegetarian meat

Traveling is the great true love of my life... I am loyal and constant in my love of travel. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby - I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me.

Elizabeth Gilbert

love-of-my-life mother baby

Devotion is diligence without assurance. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be by definition faith. Faith is walking face-first and full speed into the dark.

Elizabeth Gilbert

definitions dark faces

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down.

Elizabeth Gilbert

spiritual joy order

The sound universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there's a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of night the dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters.

Elizabeth Gilbert

misunderstood dog night

I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women.

Elizabeth Gilbert

growing-up girl mother

Mostly you meet friends when traveling by accident, like by sitting next to them on the train, or in a restaurant, or in a holding cell.

Elizabeth Gilbert

next cells sitting

Everything really is going to be okay. (And if not okay, then at least comic.)

Elizabeth Gilbert

not-okay comic okay

Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is American, too-the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness.

Elizabeth Gilbert

insecurity pleasure deserve

Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.

Elizabeth Gilbert

guy loneliness depression

Someone has to write all those stories: why not me?

Elizabeth Gilbert

why-not stories writing

The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness.

Elizabeth Gilbert

lists three writing

I wonder if I am capable of being somebody’s sun, somebody’s everything. Am I centered enough now to be the center of somebody else’s life?