Work hard, make the most of your opportunities, and grow, grow, grow.

- from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert

There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey and the Book of Common Prayer.

- from Eat, Pray, Love book by Elizabeth Gilbert

We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses - one foot is on the horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will." And the question you have to ask every day is - which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?

- from Eat, Pray, Love book by Elizabeth Gilbert

Truthfully, I'm not the best traveler in the world. I know this because I've traveled a lot and I've met people who are great at it. Real naturals. I've met travelers who are so physically sturdy they could drink a shoebox of water from a Calcutta gutter and never get sick. People who can pick up new languages where others of us might only pick up infectious diseases. People who know how to stand down a threatening border guard or cajole an uncooperative bureaucrat at the visa office. People who are the right height and complexion that they kind of look halfway normal wherever they go - in Turkey they just might be Turks, in Mexico they are suddenly Mexican, in Spain they could be mistaken for a Basque, in Northern Africa they can sometimes pass for Arab.

- from Eat, Pray, Love book by Elizabeth Gilbert

When I don't know what I'm doing, I look like I don't know what I'm doing. When I'm excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently, I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought.

- from Eat, Pray, Love book by Elizabeth Gilbert

People will stick you into all sorts of boxes. They'll call you a genius, or a fraud, or an amateur, or a pretender, or a wannabe, or a has-been, or a hobbyist, or an also-ran, or a rising star, or a master of reinvention. It doesn't matter in the least. [...] Let people have their opinions. More than that - let people be in love with their opinions, just as you and I are in love with ours. But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else's blessing in order to make your own creative work. And always remember that people's judgments about you are none of your business.

- from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert