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Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes - Page 24

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I don't think you can say that feminism has made women critical of marriage because women have been critical of marriage for centuries.

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
Thinking, Feminism, Made
Goodreads Interview, www.goodreads.com. January, 2010.

I think that if you can roast a chicken, you can get whatever you want out of a woman. Maybe it's just me but I would suspect that a man trying to impress a woman would be more likely to bring out the steak - "I killed this for you, now I'm grilling it for you."... A man that can cook you a proper meal that is like a weekday meal - which I think cannot be better than in the form of a roast chicken - that's the greatest.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Men, Thinking, Trying
"Elizabeth Gilbert Serves Up a New Classic". Interview with Michael Hainey, www.gq.com. May 24, 2012.

People will always want intimacy with one chosen person and you cannot have intimacy without privacy, which is why couples draw circles of privacy around themselves. They demand that family, neighbors and the law respect their union, and that is why we have marriage.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Couple, Law, Circles

That's what we're all sort of trying to do in our lives - to make the simplest things work out the best.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Work Out, Trying, Life Is
"Elizabeth Gilbert Serves Up a New Classic". Interview with Michael Hainey, www.gq.com. May 24, 2012.

Marriage is a strange combination of dream and reality, and we spend our lives as couples trying to negotiate that divide.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Dream, Couple, Reality

Maybe it's just me but I would suspect that a man trying to impress a woman would be more likely to bring out the steak - "I killed this for you, now I'm grilling it for you."

Elizabeth Gilbert
Men, Trying, Would Be
"The Eat, Pray, Love author and GQ alum talks about a new cookbook". Interview with Michael Hainey, www.gq.com. May 24, 2012.

Marriage is not a game for the young.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Games, Young
"Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert on mating, matrimony, and the downside of writing a freakishly popular book". Interview with Michael Hainey, www.gq.com. January 22, 2010.

You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Fiction, Writing Fiction
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

Generally speaking, that's good drama - the marriage plot or the tragedy - but the reality of women's lives is that most of us don't get what we wanted, and most of us find ways to have really interesting lives anyway.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Drama, Reality, Interesting
"Finding Cosmos in a Bed of Moss: Our Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert". Interview With Mari Malcolm, www.amazonbookreview.com. September 30, 2013.

I've ruined my eyes, I've ruined my health from my studiousness!

Elizabeth Gilbert
Eye
"Finding Cosmos in a Bed of Moss: Our Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert". Interview With Mari Malcolm, www.amazonbookreview.com. September 30, 2013.

I think my weakness as a writer is a limited imagination, and I think my strength is a talent for reflecting the world, or sort of curating things out of the world and putting them into books.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Book, Thinking, Imagination
"Mandatory Sentences: Elizabeth Gilbert on Writing from the Perch of History". Interview with Andrew Santella, www.gq.com. January 15, 2014.

I completely respect the ways people are bound in the lives that they have, whether it's because of forces outside of their control or choices that they've made that they want to honor with their own responsibilities and obligations - taking care of people around them or being a part of a community, or their work.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Responsibility, People, Choices
"Finding Cosmos in a Bed of Moss: Our Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert". Interview With Mari Malcolm, www.amazonbookreview.com. September 30, 2013.

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
Writing, Thinking, Magic
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

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
Spiritual, Real, Writing
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

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
Art, Thinking, Singing
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

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
Writing, Dna, Self
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

I see women who have this struggle between what they know is right, what they know is necessary, what they know is healthy, what they know is good for them, what they know is good for the work that they need to do, what they know is good for their bodies, what they know is good for their families - all too often ending that statement with the upturned question mark: "If it's okay with everyone?" Still asking, still requesting, still filing petitions for somebody to say that it's all right.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Struggle, Healthy, Needs
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

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
Successful, Two, Errors
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

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
Mom, Children, Lazy
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

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
Heart, Reality, Broken
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

Maturity brings - among other things - the ability to sustain and survive enormous contradictions and disappointments.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Disappointment, Maturity, Contradiction

Marriage is - among other things - a study in contradiction and disappointment, and inside that reality there is space for us to truly learn how to love.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Disappointment, Reality, Space

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
Beautiful, Art, Real
Interview with Vendela Vida, www.believermag.com. September, 2013.

I'm trying to dismantle a stereotype that in order to live any kind of creative life, you have to be in torment and suffering. We're addicted to this idea because it makes for good bio pics... but I actually think it's better to live a life where you're constantly exploring your curiosity and creativity.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Creativity, Thinking, Order
"Author Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Big Magic' is a creative life". "CBS This Morning" with Norah O'Donnell, Gayle King and John Dickerson, www.cbsnews.com. September 22, 2015.

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.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Creativity, People, Trying
"Author Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Big Magic' is a creative life". "CBS This Morning" with Norah O'Donnell, Gayle King and John Dickerson, www.cbsnews.com. September 22, 2015.

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