I didn't read this when Nora did, back before the fervor and the movie's release. I usually feel pretty smug about being a book before movie kind of girl so it is shaming me to be the one who saw the pretty movie and only then went to read the book! I have to say the movie was gorgeous and I loved the soundtrack but the book is so much better. Which isn't much of a shock because it always seems to be that way.
I think I liked Eat Pray Love so much because I related in quite a few ways to Elizabeth Gilbert. Like Elizabeth, I've been depressed before and I am also a huge worrier. So the themes of learning to be happy and overcome negative thinking were really interesting to me even though her life is very different from mine. I am kind of bewildered by all the people online who love to hate this book and/or the author. She came off as very likable to me and it's totally clear in the book that she was never prescribing world travel as a solution for all of her readers' life problems.
Chapbook:
"It's kind of a fairyland of language for me here." p.38
This entire paragraph making me want to be in Paris so very much!
"Traveling is the true great love of my life..." p.41
And I suppose I could say arm chair traveling is the great love of my life if it didn't make me so depressed.
"Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend." p.55
"...you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new." p.56
"it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection." p.95 from the Bhagavad Gita. The first thing that popped into my mind when I read this was one of my favorite people:
"Always be a first rate version of yourself, instead of a second rate version of somebody else." -Judy Garland
Which made me want to post this:
Crazy Aunt Liz story on pg. 96 This story made me laugh so hard. I think everyone is in danger of becoming that crazy aunt at some point.
"... to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it?" p.113
"Our whole business therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen." p.123 Saint Augustine
"...the everyday mundane effort that must be applied to spiritual practice in order to purify the self." p.131
"What worked yesterday doesn't always work today. Prayers can become stale and drone into the boring and familiar if you let your attention stagnate." p.177
"...you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control. Drop everything else but that. Because if you can't learn to master your thinking, you're in deep trouble forever." p.178
I love that advice. I love the entire two pages that follow it maybe the most of everything in this book.
"Because no matter how creatively I try to look at my habit of interrupting, I can't find another way to see it than this: 'I believe that what I am saying is more important than what you are saying.' And I can't find another way to see that than: 'I believe that I am more important than you.' And that must end." p.193
"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort." p.260
That should be embroidered on cushions! She goes on to say:
"You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments." p.260
And just for the prettiness:
