More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The women whom I love and admire for their strength and grace did not get that way because shit worked out. They got that way because shit went wrong and they handled it. They handled it in a thousand different ways on a thousand different days, but they handled it. Those women are my superheroes. ELIZABETH GILBERT
I’m just someone struggling to recognize their messy life in a world of perfect Instagram ones and feeling like a bit of a fuck-up.
The stuff real life was made of. The stuff that doesn’t make the photo album.
‘But that’s one of the good things about getting older: often the most terrible of things turn into the most amusing through the lens of time.’
‘And I’m forty-something.’ ‘So? I’m eighty-something.’ I smiled, despite myself. ‘Don’t worry about getting older, worry about becoming dull.’
Surely romance isn’t about overpriced flowers and an expensive restaurant?
Things are always better with a book.
A few months ago my life was all mapped out. Now everything’s turned upside down
and I’m back here again.
‘Differences can make or break a marriage. Often the differences you love in the beginning can be the reasons you want to murder them five years later.’
Sliding doors. Isn’t that what they call it? When a split-second decision changes the course of your life.
It’s a powerful thing, feeling like you’re understood without ever having to explain. To have that connection. I once read somewhere that the reason two people come together is to feel like they’re not alone.
But a lot can happen in five years. You can go from feeling gloriously happy to feeling like you’re never going to be happy again.
What I want to know is, when did busy become better? When did a jam-packed diary become a measure of success?
‘Why do men always say their ex-girlfriends are crazy?’
‘He was. But fun’s not the same as nice, is it?’
I always think life’s a bit like an obstacle course. As soon as you’ve got through one, there’s always another waiting,
all of which are lovely but make me feel a bit left out and less than.
‘I’ve got a Kindle, but it’s just not the same.
Life moves on. It has to. And yet . . . And yet how can the world keep on turning, business as usual, without them in it? As time moves on, the further away you become from the last moment you saw them. They retreat into your past as you travel into the future. The distance between you growing as their voice fades and the memories blur.
had a very conservative upbringing, but I was allergic to conformity.
No one ever tells you that when you’re younger, do they? That inside all those boring-looking
looking old people there still beats a teenage heart that finds the same things funny.
the more people post inspirational quotes, the more I worry about them.
Embrace your sense of humour, don’t ever take yourself too seriously, every day is another chance to laugh instead of cry, and when nothing is certain, everything is a hell of a lot less scary when you make fun of it. Amen.
I gaze at my eighteen-year-old self and it’s like looking at a different person.
In relationships we’re taught to be afraid of what happens when there’s nothing left to say, like I was with Ethan. But the truth is, if you’re with the right person, you don’t need to say anything.
‘Everybody wants things to happen yesterday – nature’s not like that.’
‘Nature teaches you to have patience and faith. Life’s just a cycle, you know. Things might seem dead, but they always come back to life
‘Remember that, love. When life buries us under all its heartache and disappointment, think about a seed. It needs to be buried in order for it to grow. That’s how the magic happens. But you have to have faith. Remember that. Patience and faith.’
About starting over, when you thought you would be finished already.’
‘What I don’t understand is why a man’d think you would?’
People just don’t know what to do about death. It frightens them. They fear they may be next. I remind them of their own mortality, and nobody wants that now, do they?’
I’ve found friends and acquaintances keep their distance because they don’t want to upset you or say the wrong thing. What they don’t realize is you’re already upset beyond anything they could ever say or do. It’s their silence that upsets you. You feel isolated. Abandoned.’
‘No one can make another person do something they don’t want to.
Life is all about timing. Its very creation is dependent on the egg being released at just the right time for it to be fertilized by the sperm. In love, timing is everything. You can meet the right person at the wrong time and the wrong person at the right time. Even in death, timing is of great significance.
Learning that listening can be more powerful than talking.
And not just shame at how we are treating the inhabitants of our planet, but shame that my own problems are completely insignificant when held in context.
I know all these things to be true, and yet I still feel all of these other things.
Does that make you selfish? I think it just makes you human.
If getting older has taught me one thing, it’s that I feel so many conflicting things about so many different things, and to negate or stifle any of them doesn’t make them go away. Emotions don’t necessarily have a moral compass. Feelings can’t be shamed into disappearing. Suppressing and ignoring them will only make them come back to bite you in the therapist’s chair.
‘Monty always said books weren’t meant to be owned, but to be shared.’
it’s the deception that destroys.
We’re encouraged to be our true, authentic selves, but being told to feel happy when you’re just not feeling it, only encourages us to be the exact opposite. Life can be wonderful but it can also be scary and hard. We should be free to feel sad or gloomy or just downright bloody miserable, without feeling like there’s something wrong with us
Because sometimes happiness isn’t a choice. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t find joy. Which is why I’ve decided to stop beating myself up by desperately seeking happiness and give myself the permission to feel exactly how I feel, when I feel it. In fact, maybe, it’s not happiness we should be looking for after all – but acceptance.
books are meant for sharing, not owning. No point in it just being stuck in my bookcase.’
‘Word by word, page by page,’ Cricket tells her cheerfully, ‘that’s how a writer writes and how a reader should read. You’ll get there in the end. Doesn’t matter if it takes six months or a year or longer to finish it. That’s what I always used to tell my husband.’
‘You know, you never think you’re going to get old. I still feel like that twenty-five-year-old girl inside.’
the people who matter will see you, no matter what.’
‘But statistics don’t stop you feeling like a failure.’
