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? Elizabeth Gilbert More Quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert More Quotes From Elizabeth Gilbert I think the thing that I lost in myself when I stopped writing fiction and the thing that I rediscovered and started mining again is, for lack of a better word, magic. It's the way you can brush up against the inexplicable and the mystical. Elizabeth Gilbert magic writing thinking For the entire decade of my 30s and the early part of my 40s, I didn't write a word of fiction. I just left behind a dream of my life. Elizabeth Gilbert dream writing fiction 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. Elizabeth Gilbert benefits trying men We live in this society where you must constantly be reinventing yourself. The big question is what are you doing next. The only thing they want is composed of these three elements: They want you to do it the exact same way because they want more of it; but they want it to be totally different; and they want it to be better. That's all you have to do. You just have to do something that's exactly the same, totally different, and better. Elizabeth Gilbert elements three different 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. Elizabeth Gilbert real spiritual writing 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. Elizabeth Gilbert singing art thinking All of women's stories in the 19th century had either one of two endings: you either had the good Jane Austen marriage at the end and you were happy; or you had the terrible Henry James savage downfall because of your own hubris as a woman, or you've made some great error leading you down a path to ruin. One is the story of love that's successful and the other is the story usually of reckless love that goes terribly wrong that destroys the woman. Elizabeth Gilbert errors successful two 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. Elizabeth Gilbert important joy people 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. Elizabeth Gilbert real beautiful art Being a woman did not look enviable to me, even when it looked admirable. It looked like nonstop sacrifice and service. Because it was. Being a woman seemed vulnerable and sad. Even the strong women I knew - and they were all strong - had earned their strength through enduring huge disappointments and tremendous struggles. Elizabeth Gilbert strong-women disappointment struggle When you write a novel, there’s a level at which you are much more revealing about who you are because you’re less self-conscious about how you’re presenting yourself. You are accidentally leaving your DNA all over everything in a novel because it’s all coming from you. Elizabeth Gilbert dna self writing I think another way that you can really harm yourself as an artist is by buying into the mythology that it's really important. Elizabeth Gilbert important artist thinking I know what it feels like to be bruised; I know what it feels like to carry things around with you that never totally heal. There's closure and then there's stuff that's kind of like, Well, I guess it's going to be in the minivan forever. And you carry it with you and you continue on your journey with your minivan full of stuff, which I think most of us do. Elizabeth Gilbert journey forever thinking I don't think you can say that feminism has made women critical of marriage because women have been critical of marriage for centuries. Elizabeth Gilbert feminism made thinking Women come into marriage with great inflated expectations for what they want this relationship to be, and men don't give it that much thought. Men come into it with reluctance about being capsized or trapped or whatever their fear is. When you check in later, women are disappointed because their expectations have not come to pass, and men are pleasantly surprised. Elizabeth Gilbert expectations giving men My mom is a master gardener and I grew up on a farm. I came back to it really late in life and discovered that despite how lazy and inattentive I was as a child, I had managed to accidentally learn quite a bit about gardening. Elizabeth Gilbert lazy mom children The reality, certainly in my life, is that we all have love stories that go terribly wrong; we all have horribly broken hearts. And somehow we endure. We're not destroyed by it. Elizabeth Gilbert broken heart reality I've read that under trauma, that you have this ability to kind of disconnect from the experience. Elizabeth Gilbert trauma ability kind You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction. Elizabeth Gilbert writing-fiction writing fiction You almost can't wait too long [to get married]. The longer you wait, the better off you are going to be. And the happier your kids are going to be, and the happier a mom you are going to be. Elizabeth Gilbert mom long kids
