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Quote by Elizabeth Gilbert

“How high can you fly before you crash? How long can you stay intoxicated beyond all recognition? How long can you sustain a buzz, a bender, a peak experience, a magic carpet ride, a hot-burning flame of mania, a trip to Venus on a pink cloud? How many days can you cut Earth School before you get called to the principal’s office? These are all very good questions that addicts do not generally like to answer. When pushed, however, an addict’s short response to all these questions is usually something along the lines of: As long as I can. We will keep this ride going for as long as we can. And we will not put it down until there is nothing left to smoke, drink, fuck, eat, spend, hoard, shoot into our veins, disappear into, or lick off the carpet in crumbs.”

Quote by Elizabeth Gilbert

Book:All the Way to the River
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All the Way to the River

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Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert is an American author renowned for her best-selling novel 'Eat, Pray, Love'. Born on July 18, 1969, she has achieved widespread acclaim for her compelling storytelling and personal narratives. Gilbert's writing frequently delves into themes of self-discovery and transformation. more

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“Gentlemen,” he said, “I invite you to go and measure that kiosk. You will see that the length of the counter is one hundred and forty-nine centimeters – in other words, one hundred-billionth of the distance between the earth and the sun. The height at the rear, one hundred and seventy-six centimeters, divided by the width of the window, fifty-six centimeters, is 3.14. The height at the front is nineteen decimeters, equal, in other words, to the number of years of the Greek lunar cycle. The sum of the heights of the two front corners and the two rear corners is one hundred and ninety times two plus one hundred and seventy-six times two, which equals seven hundred and thirty-two, the date of the victory at Poitiers. The thickness of the counter is 3.10 centimeters, and the width of the cornice of the window is 8.8 centimeters. Replacing the numbers before the decimals by the corresponding letters of the alphabet, we obtain C for ten and H for eight, or C10H8, which is the formula for naphthalene.” “Fantastic,” I said. “You did all these measurements?” “No,” Aglie said. “They were done on another kiosk, by a certain Jean-Pierre Adam. But I would assume that all lottery kiosks have more or less the same dimensions. With numbers you can do anything you like. Suppose I have the sacred number 9 and I want to get the number 1314, date of the execution of Jacques de Molay – a date dear to anyone who, like me, professes devotion to the Templar tradition of knighthood. What do I do? I multiply nine by one hundred and forty-six, the fateful day of the destruction of Carthage. How did I arrive at this? I divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by two, by three, et cetera, until I found a satisfying date. I could also have divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by 6.28, the double of 3.14, and I would have got two hundred and nine. That is the year in which Attalus I, king of Pergamon, joined the anti-Macedonian League. You see?”

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Book:Foucault’s Pendulum
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“I do not want to tell this part of the story because part of me still doesn’t want it to be true. I still don’t want Rayya to become who she became toward the end of her life. I want her to remain how I saw her for all those years before—heroic, brave, commanding, honest, astonishing, cool. And I still don’t want me to become what I became at the end of her life—desperate, clinging, resentful, lost, powerless, degraded, insane. I want you, dear reader, to love and admire Rayya, and I want you to love and admire me. I want you to see us as beautiful and undefeatable. I want this to be the most inspiring book of the year. I want this to be a thoughtful book about death and dying, written by a wise and spiritual woman who accepts the reality of mortality with a sense of compassionate detachment. I want this to be a tale of two courageous and amazing souls who faced down death with a sense of creativity and wild adventure, and who did enough living in the last months of Rayya’s life to resonate love across the cosmos for a thousand more lifetimes. I want to tell you that our bond was never broken—not even by the ravages of cancer, or by mortality. I want to forget how things actually went down.”

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Book:All the Way to the River
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