C. Elizabeth Quotes

If you're alive, you're a creative person.

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

It has never been easy for me to understand why people work so hard to create something beautiful, but then refuse to share it with anyone, for fear of criticism.

Absolute certainty is not something I strive for anymore. I've learned the hard way that destiny usually looks upon our most strident convictions with amusement, or perhaps even pity.

I was a writer before 'Eat, Pray, Love,' and I'll be a writer after it's over. It's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

If I could read while I was driving, showering, socializing or sleeping, I would do it.

I believe that - if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression - that you should take on this work like a holy calling.

Every few years, I think, 'Maybe now I'm finally smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand 'Ulysses.'' So I pick it up and try it again. And by page 10, as always, I'm like, 'What the hell?'

I've always been afraid of saying no to people because I don't want them to be disappointed and dislike me.

I'm a pleaser. That's my character.

Thich Nhat Hanh has the ability to bring forth the state of peace that we each inherently posses merely by his presence in a room-this is divine power.

It used to be that god was revealed in the wonders of nature; now God was being challenged by those same wonders. Scholars were now required to choose one side or the other.

One of these poems I wrote after having been here only a month. The other, I wrote this morning. In the space between the two poems, I have found acres of grace

My life's accomplishments? Sanity, and you.

How could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn’t it?

The beauty and variety of the natural world are merely the visible legacies of endless war.

Who loves you most? Who loves you best? Who thinks of you when others rest?

To show a longing for anything that one cannot have, for instance, is not a clever position.

I have searched frantically for contentment for so many years in so many ways, and all the acquisitions and accomplishments- they run you down in the end.

Beauty is not required. Beauty is accuracy's distraction.

the four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one) poetry.

Parla Come Mangi' --It is a common way to say 'be simple', 'don't try to be rhetorical' literaly: 'speak the way you eat

To be prosperous and happy in life, Henry, it is simple. Pick one woman, pick it well, and surrender.

You never know how a good quest is going to end.

I believe in miracles, I believe in the Law of Attraction, but even I don't think I'm big enough to manifest five Asian elephants cloaked in gold.

There's only one problem with the hero's journey, it never included women.

The hero's journey is simply who we are as human beings.

My whole life I've been an over-giver. My general operating policy has always been, 'If it belongs to me, don't worry: You can have it!'

There's nothing special about your fear.

The mosquitoes here are big enough to rape a chicken.

I've been screwed and sued and tattooed, and I'm still standin' here in front of you.

I like it when science and devotion find places of intersection.

I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women.

Mostly you meet friends when traveling by accident, like by sitting next to them on the train, or in a restaurant, or in a holding cell.

Everything really is going to be okay. (And if not okay, then at least comic.)

Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is American, too-the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness.

But vegetarians can eat this...Because intestines aren't even meat, Liz. They're just sh$*.

You make some big grandoise decision about what you need to do, or who you need to be, and then circumstances arise that immediately reveal to you how little you understood about yourself.

Love renders all of our plans and all of our hopes a gamble.

If Todd [Willingham] was guilty of anything, it was just his self-preservation. He got up and ran out of the house and then thought about the children after the fact.

As a writer, you always read in two minds: You read as a reader and you enjoy it, and you look at it as a writer, and you just admire the architecture and the construction.

The idea that a prisoner would confess to a complete stranger that he had committed a crime - I just didn't buy that.

I can see how the authorities could not like Todd [ Willingham], because he's not a person who is going to give you respect if you don't deserve it just because you say something.

For the entire decade of my 30s and the early part of my 40s, I didn't write a word of fiction. I just left behind a dream of my life.

I went to Shea Stadium and used the men's room. Terrifying. There was this little kid looking at me through the crack [in the stall]. and I was like, "If you tell anyone what you've seen..."

If you want to know the world, sometimes you have to get out and roll around.

Nobody's life is interesting enough to warrant a third memoir.

I think another way that you can really harm yourself as an artist is by buying into the mythology that it's really important.

My work is incredibly important to me personally. It brings me joy and it brings me life and it brings me meaning. It doesn't necessarily have to be important to the people who read it.

No experience in this world has ever been cathartic without the willing participation of the individual. Life does not automatically bestow wisdom or growth upon anyone just for showing up.