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"My husband was sleeping in the other room, in our bed.I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn't wake him to share in my distress-what would be the point? He'd already been watching me fall apart for months now, watching me behave like a madwoman (we both agreed on that word), and I only exhausted him. We both knew there was something wrong with me, and he'd been losing patience with it. We'd been fighting and crying, and we were weary in that way that only a couple whose marriage is collapsing can be weary. We had the eyes of refugees."
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"If you take a stand [for God] and mean it, you may suffer persecution. Some of your friends will drift away. They don't want to be with people like you. You speak to their conscience. They feel uncomfortable in your presence because you live for God."

"Our relationship must be right with God before it can be right with man."

"Was Deirdre right about me purposely wanting relationships that were impossible?"

"Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal."

"Go! Yes, You! Go! I will not force you to like me; I will not force you to love me. Unconditional love has a condition inside it but there is no you in me. If I know my real me, then I know your real you. I know your value in me and I also know my value in you. If your value is not in me and my value is not in you, then I will not force you to like me; I will not force you to love me, so go!"

"Things had improved after he was born. We both loved him with such fervor that it was impossible that some wouldn't splash back on us."

"A relationship is the union of two psychological systems."

"To get someone's attentionsay three words with compassion.Say "I love you", more than me,like the river loves the sea."

"When I'm with you,I feel exposed.Naked. When I'm naked with you, I feel clothed.Sheltered."
Explore more quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

"You know, I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche. It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun."

"I see marriage as an operation that sews two people together, and divorce is a kind of amputation that can take a long time to heal. The longer you were married, or the rougher the amputation, the harder it is to recover."

"Getting out of a marriage is rough, though, and not just for the legal / financial complications or the massive lifestyle upheaval. (As my friend Deborah once advised me wisely: "Nobody ever died from splitting up furniture.") It's the emotional recoil that kills you, the shock of stepping off the track of a conventional lifestyle and losing all the embracing comforts that keep so many people on that track forever."

"This much I do know - I'm exhausted by the cumulative consequences of a lifetime of hasty choices and chaotic passions."

"Are you considering becoming a creative person? Too late, you already are one. To even call somebody "a creative person" is almost laughably redundant; creativity is the hallmark of our species. We have the sense for it; we have the curiosity for it; we have the opposable thumbs for it; we have the rhythm for it; we have the language and the excitement and the innate connection to divinity for it.If you're alive, you're a creative person. You and I and everyone you know are descended from tens of thousands of years of makers. Decorators, tinkerers, storytellers, dancers, explorers, fiddlers, drummers, builders, growers, problem-solvers, and embellishers--these are our common ancestors."

"Destiny, I feel is also a relationship-a play between grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over, half of it is absolutely in your hands and your actions will show measurable consequences. Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny; he's a little of both. 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 everyday 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?"
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