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Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes about Writing

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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

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.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Beautiful, Writing, Dancing

As for discipline—it's important, but sort of overrated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Believe, Writing, Self

I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Universe
"Thoughts on Writing". www.elizabethgilbert.com.

Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But they are both equally true.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Memories, Writing, Energy
Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.152, Bloomsbury Publishing

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.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Mind, Privilege

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. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Opposites, Focus
Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.30, Bloomsbury Publishing

Someone asked me if I would like to write a man on death row, be a pen pal, and I was like, sure. I volunteered. I had been in a place in my life - a relationship had ended; my parents were getting elderly - I was kind of adrift. The name that was given to me, just randomly, was Todd Willingham. And he wrote me a letter, and in this letter, he thanked me for writing him and [said that] if I would like to visit, he would put me on his visitor list... I was just really struck by the letter from Todd. It was very polite; it was very kind.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Men, Elderly
"Frontline (Death by Fire)". TV Series, www.pbs.org. October 19, 2010.

When it seemed like I was going to really have to be there at Todd's [Willingham] execution, I don't think I could have done it. I think I began to distance myself. I didn't visit as often; I didn't write as often. This was kind of after my conversation with [fire science expert] Gerald Hurst. And the [car] accident made sure that I didn't have to go up there. But I think he and I both shared that.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Distance, Writing, Thinking

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.

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

Despite having written five books, I worry that I have not written the right kinds of books, or that perhaps I have dedicated too much of my life to writing, and have therefore neglected other aspects of my being.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Book, Writing, Worry
"Lighten up on yourself to have a better life" By Elizabeth Gilber, www.cnn.com. May 3, 2010.

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.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Believe, Writing, Expression
"Thoughts on Writing". www.elizabethgilbert.com.

But when it comes to writing the thing that I've sort of been thinking about lately, is why? You know, is it rational? Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Thinking, Earth

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
Writing, Three, Lists
Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.30, Bloomsbury Publishing

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

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Stories, Why Not

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

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.

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.

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 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.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Thinking, Phones
Goodreads Interview, www.goodreads.com. January, 2010.

I'm not particularly inventive. If you left me in а room and told me to write a novel, I wouldn't be able to do it. But if you gave me two years in a public library around the corner, I could. It all comes from sort of mixing the true and the invented. I'm not a fabulist. I'm more of a reporter.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Years, Two
Source: www.gq.com

I was a bartender for a long time, so I know how to make drinks, but I'm more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did, and why I get to produce more writing than she did, and why my marriage isn't in dire straits.

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

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