#so

I love my friends and family, but I also love it when they can't find me and I can spend all day reading or walking all alone, in silence, eight thousand miles away from everyone. All alone and unreachable in a foreign country is one my most favorite possible things to be. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#alone #also #away #country #day

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 should just put it bluntly, because we're all sort of friends here now - it's exceedingly likely that my greatest success is behind me. Oh, so Jesus, what a thought! You know that's the kind of thought that could lead a person to start drinking gin at nine o'clock in the morning, and I don't want to go there. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#behind #bluntly #clock #could #drinking

I think it's unfortunate that there exists only one path in America to complete social legitimacy, and that is marriage. I think, for instance, that it would be far easier for Americans to elect a black president or a female president than an unmarried president. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#black #complete #easier #elect #exists

I used to say, 'Man, I think I'd be a really good dad. I'll be a great provider. I'm funny; I'll go on trips with them - I'll do all sorts of stuff.' But the momming? I'm not made for that. I have a really good mom; I know what she put into it. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#funny #go #good #good mom #great

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

Listen - of course money changes everything, but so does sunlight, and so does food: These are powerful but neutral energy sources, neither inherently good nor evil but shaped only by the way we use them. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#course #does #energy #energy sources #everything

Marriage is not simply a romantic union between two people; it's also a political and economic contract of the highest order. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#between #contract #economic #highest #highest order

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