Elizabeth Gilbert

Worn Out

Quotations
"The priest was young and seemed tired, not because of what had happened that night but because of something that had been wearing him down for years."
-Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

"But I was weary of myself, and weary of my lonely rooms; and I did my own errands, for no better reason than that it was something to do." -Wilkie Collins, Armadale

"The re-beginning of one's life, at the re-beginning of every day, has always been something weary and hopeless to me for years past." -Wilkie Collins, Armadale

"'"I felt weary, weary, done up, as if I hadn't had one hour's sleep since the day I was born."'" -Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

"Oh, cold world — I have grown so weary of you and all your horrible bathrooms."
-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

"…And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood…" -Robert Frost, "Birches"

"Psych"

Quotations
"Psychologists call that state of deluded madness 'narcissistic love.'
I call it 'my twenties.'" -Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

"Whom can I talk to? Get advice from? No one. A psychiatrist is the God of our age. But they cost money. And I won't take advice, even if I want it. I'll kill myself. I am beyond help. No one here has time to probe, to aid me in understanding myself…so many others are worse off than I. How can I selfishly demand help, solace, guidance? No, it is my own mess, and even if now I have lost my sense of perspective, thereby my creative sense of humor, I will not let myself get sick, go mad, or retreat like a child into blubbering on someone else's shoulder. Masks are the order of the day — and the least I can do is cultivate the illusion that I am gay, serene, not hollow and afraid. Someday, god knows when, I will stop this absurd, self-pitying, idle, futile despair. I will begin to think again, and to act according to the way I think. Attitude is a pitifully relative and capricious quality to base a faith on. Like the proverbial sand, it slides, founders, sucks me down to hell.
At present, the last thing I can do is be objective, self-critical, diagnostic — but I do know that my philosophy is too subjective, relative & personal to be strong and creative in all circumstances. It is fine in fair weather, but it dissolves when they forty day rains come. I must submerge it before a larger, transcendental goal or craft. What that is I cannot not now imagine." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

"…we all like to think we are important enough to need psychiatrists." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Don't Chase

Quotations
"'If we don't chase things — sometimes the things following us can catch up.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

"'If you run after a man he'll run away. It's instinct. We have to run when anything chases us.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Magic for Marigold

"Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time — when pursued like a bandit — will heave like one; always remaining one county or 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. That you're not supposed to catch it. At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you." -Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

All That Glitters

Quotations
"And the strongest feeling within me, if truth be told, is that which makes a sufferer curse those who do not suffer and seek to drag them down.  I confess that I so despise and envy your untroubled ignorance that I want finally to force upon you the truth of my words…." -Douglas Hill, "True Believer" from Hidden Turnings

"…when anybody says 'How future ages will envy me,' it is safe to say that they are extremely uneasy at the present moment." -Virginia Woolf, Orlando

"And I know what it feels like to want something, believe me.  I well know what desire feels like." -Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

"…The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!— that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.…" -Edgar Allan Poe, "Annabel Lee"

Apemantus: Like madness is the glory of this life.
As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.
We make ourselves fools, to disport ourselves;
And spend our flatteries, to drink those men
Upon whose age we void it up again,
With poisonous spite and envy.
Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?
Who dies, that bears not one spurn to their graves
Of their friends' gift?
I should fear those that dance before me now
Would one day stamp upon me: 't has been done;
Men shut their doors against a setting sun. -William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

On Sadness #9

Quotation
"'So sadness is a place?' Giovanni asked.
'Sometimes people live there for years,' I said." -Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

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