Big Magic Quotes | Elizabeth Gilbert | Scribble Whatever

The best quotes by the author we have brought to you

Big Magic
Elizabeth Gilbert (Author of Big Magic)

“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you is a fine art, in and of itself.” (Big Magic Quotes)

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic
Big Magic Quotes

“A good-enough novel violently written now is better than a perfect novel meticulously written never.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“All I know for certain is that this is how I want to spend my life – collaborating to the best of my ability with forces of inspiration that I can neither see, nor prove, nor command, nor understand.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Anyhow, the older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I’m far more moved by authenticity. Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Basically, your fear is like a mall cop who thinks he’s a Navy SEAL: He hasn’t slept in days, he’s all hopped up on Red Bull, and he’s liable to shoot at his own shadow in an absurd effort to keep everyone “safe.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic
Big Magic Quotes

“Be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.” 

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that merely by being here you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Do not let your ego totally run the show, or it will shut down the show. Your ego is a wonderful servant, but it’s a terrible master – because the only thing your ego ever wants is reward, reward, and more reward. And since there’s never enough reward to satisfy, your ego will always be disappointed. Left unmanaged, that kind of disappointment will rot you from the inside out.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Do what you love to do, and do it with both seriousness and lightness. At least then you will know that you have tried and that – whatever the outcome – you have traveled a noble path.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic
Big Magic Quotes

“Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Everybody imitates before they can innovate.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Failure has a function. It asks you whether you really want to go on making things.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us – albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“I have dedicated my entire life to the pursuit of creativity, and I spend a lot of time encouraging other people to do the same, because I think a creative life is the most marvelous life there is.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“I have never created anything in my life that did not make me feel, at some point or another, like I was the guy who just walked into a fancy ball wearing a homemade lobster costume.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more that a deep existential angst the says, again and again, ‘I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“If I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic
Big Magic Quotes

“It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“It might have been done before, but it hasn’t been done by you!”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic
Big Magic Quotes

“Most individuals have never had enough time, and they’ve never had enough resources, and they’ve never had enough support or patronage or reward … and yet still they persist in creating. They persist because they care. They persist because they are called to be makers, by any means necessary.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Most of all, be ready. Keep your eyes open. Listen. Follow your curiosity. Ask questions. Sniff around. Remain open. Trust in the miraculous truth that new and marvelous ideas are looking for human collaborators every single day. Ideas of every kind are constantly galloping toward us, constantly passing through us, constantly trying to get our attention.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Our creativity is a wild and unexpected bonus from the universe. It’s as if all our gods and angels gathered together and said, “It’s tough down there as a human being, we know. Here – have some delights.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes – but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work. Perfectionists often decide in advance that the end product is never going to be satisfactory, so they don’t even bother trying to be creative in the first place.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: It needs to work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble. Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust – and those elements are universally accessible. Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“The older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I’m far more moved by authenticity. Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“The sooner and more passionately you get married to this idea – that it is ultimately entirely up to you – the better off you’ll be.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“This is how it feels to lead the faithful creative life: You try and try and try, and nothing works. But you keep trying, and you keep seeking, and then sometimes, in the least expected place and time, it finally happens.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“We are all just beginners here, and we shall all die beginners.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic
Big Magic Quotes

“Whatever you do, try not to dwell too long on your failures. You don’t need to conduct autopsies on your disasters.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“While the paths and outcomes of creative living will vary wildly from person to person, I can guarantee you this: A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Work hard, make the most of your opportunities, and grow, grow, grow.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“You can clear out whatever obstacles are preventing you from living your most creative life, with the simple understanding that whatever is bad for you is probably also bad for your work.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“You don’t need to conduct autopsies on your disasters.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“You don’t just get to leap from bright moment to bright moment. How you manage yourself between those bright moments, when things aren’t going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your vocation, and how equipped you are for the weird demands of creative living. Holding yourself together through all the phases of creation is where the real work lies.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“You have treasures hidden within you – extraordinary treasures – and so do I, and so does everyone around us. And bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion, and the clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Your creative work is not your baby; if anything, you are its baby. Everything I have ever written has brought me into being. Every project has matured me in a different way. I am who I am today precisely because of what I have made and what it has made me into.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Your education isn’t over when they say it’s over; your education is over when you say it’s over.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic
Big Magic Quotes

“Your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you’re still here.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

“Your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you’re still here. I know that’s what you want for yourself, because that’s what I want for myself, too.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
Big Magic

Read more Quotes like this

Big Magic Quotes

Follow us

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top