#iv

I am far more of a loner than people would imagine. But I am the most gregarious and socially interactive loner you ever met. The thing is, I am fascinated by people's stories and I'm very talkative and can't ever say no to anything or anyone, so I tend to over-socialize, to give away too much of my time to the many people I adore. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#am #anyone #anything #away #ever

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#defects #existence #individuality #necessary

I know I'm not a self-indulgent idiot; I also know I'm not the second coming of Deepak Chopra. If I had believed either of those, or both, as some people do when they get famous, that's when the mental illness arrives. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#arrives #believed #both #coming #either

I push every day against forces that say you have to go faster, be more effective, be more productive, you have to constantly outdo yourself, you have to constantly outdo your neighbor - all of the stuff that creates an incredibly productive society, but also a very neurotic one. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#also #constantly #creates #day #effective

I think that people who live in cultures without quite so much privilege, opportunity or grandiosity have a little bit more respect for the workings of destiny, and the limitations that people can find themselves in through no fault of their own. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#cultures #destiny #fault #find #i

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

#did #dire #drinks #get #how

If life gives you lemons, don't settle for simply making lemonade - make a glorious scene at a lemonade stand. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#glorious #lemonade #lemons #life #make

Men go into marriage with virtually no expectations whatsoever. Ten years later, the men are delightfully surprised to find out that it's actually kind of nice, and the women have sort of had to take a nose dive from what they thought it was going to be. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#delightfully #dive #expectations #find #go

My husband is not American. He was born in Brazil, where he grew up under a filthy, corrupt dictatorship. In his twenties, he moved to Europe, where he lived for a while under various socialist democracies. He spent a few years on a kibbutz in Israel, living out a utopian experiment in communal existence. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#born #brazil #communal #corrupt #democracies

Now, if you are like me - if you are like practically anybody in America - then you probably hold some negative opinions about the French, based upon movies, rumors, recent headlines, unfortunate run-ins with Parisian waiters, or... you know... all that unpleasantness surrounding the Vichy regime. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#america #anybody #based #french #headlines