(Elizabeth Gilbert)

• If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time - everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover all my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else. (pg. 65)
• ...when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt - this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight. (pg. 115)
• ...you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead. (pg. 137)
• People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. (pg. 149)
• "...You go set your lily-white ass down in that meditation cave every day for the next three months and I promise you this - you're gonna start seeing some stuff that's so damn beautiful it'll make you wanna throw rocks at the Taj Mahal." (pg. 171)
• "...You work so hard one day, but the next day you must only work again. You eat, but the next day you are already hungry. You find love, then love go away. You are born with nothing - no watch, no t-shirt. You work hard, then you die with nothing - no watch, no t-shirt. You are young, then you are old. No matter how hard you work, you cannot stop getting old." (pg. 271)
• "...love is always complicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something." (pg. 277)
• I wonder if I am capable of being somebody's sun, somebody's everything. Am I centered enough now to be the center or somebody else's life? But when I finally brought up the topic with him one night, he said, "Have I asked you to be that person, darling? Have I asked you to be the center of my life?" (pg. 311)
• We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure... I'm lonely... I'm a failure... I'm lonely...) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras. (pg. 325)