Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

"... the rules of transcendence insist that you will not advance even one inch closer to divinity as long as you cling to even one last seductive thread of blame."

"Religious ceremonies are of paramount importance in Bali ( an island, don't forget, with seven unpredictable volcanoes on it-you would pray, too)."

"Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most poeple who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be - that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don't really belong there."

"You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be."

"sometimes the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else - Richard"

"Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can't let this one go. It's over, Groceries. David's purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of that marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was his job, and he did great, but now it's over. Problem is, you can't accept that this relationship had a real short shelf life. You're like a dog at the dump, baby - you're just lickin' at an empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you're not careful, that can's gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it."

"One instant, you're just a regular Joe, schlepping through your mundane life, and then suddenly - what is this? - nothing has changed, yet you feel stirred by a grace, swollen with wonder, overflowing with bliss. Everything - for no reason whatsoever - is perfect."

"You can let yourself off the hook anytime you want, Liz. That's the divine contract of a little something we call free will."

"The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,... The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself."

"The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not."

"Vitamin E, get much sleep, drink much water, travel to a place far away...meditate and teach your heart that this is destiny.” - Wayan"

"But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while?"

"The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I'm going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Different schools of thought over the centuries have found different explanation for man's apparently inherently flawed state. Taoists call it imbalance, Buddism calls it ignorance, Islam blames our misery on rebellion against God, and the Judeo-Christian tradition attributes all our suffering to original sin. Freudians say that unhappiness is the inevitable result of the clash between our natural drives and civilization's needs. (As my friend Deborah the psychologist explains it: "Desire is the design flaw.") The Yogis, however, say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine. Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: "You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not."

"The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people."

"Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time - when pursued like bandit - will behave like one; always remaining one country or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have to stop because it won't. You have to admit that you can't catch it. At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you."

"At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you."

"Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. The words made me laugh in delight."

"You have no idea how strong my love is!"

"There are always two figures in a marriage, two votes, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations."

"I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn't wake him to share in my distress."