Elizabeth Gilbert Book Review: "Eat. Pray. Love." (2006) Favorite Lines

"That's the thing about human life--there's no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed."

"I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, "There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. 'How much do you love me?' and 'Who's in charge?' Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief and suffering."

"This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. If you bring the right earnestness to your ceremony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God."

"Imagine the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing-- right in the hub of the wheel-- not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness--that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace."

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes ever travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings."

"...he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company. If you are appalled, he said, then it was a devil who had visited you. If you feel lightened, it was an angel."