Eat, Pray and Love

Some of my favorite quotes/lines from the book.

To me, the Augusteum is like a person who’s led a totally crazy life – who maybe started out as a housewife, then unexpectedly became a widow, then took up fan-dancing to make money, ended up somehow as the first female dentist in outer space, and then tried her hand at national politics – yet who has managed to hold an intact sense of herself throughout every upheaval.

I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Auguteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough – but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.

Naples – They talk loud and emphatically, and if you can’t understand what they’re actually saying out of their mouths, you can usually pick up the inference from the gesture. Like that punk little grammar-school girl on the back of her older cousin’s motorbike, who flipped me the finger and a charming smile as she drove by, just to make me understand, “Hey, no hard feelings, lady. But I’m only seven, and I can already tell you’re a complete moron, but that’s cool – I think you’re halfway OK despite yourself and I kinda like your dumb-ass face. We both know you could love to be me, but sorry – you can’t, Anyhow, here’s my middle finger, enjoy your stay in Naples, and ciao!”

Virginia Woolf wrote, “Across the broad continent of a woman’s life falls the shadow of a sword.” On one side of that sword, she said there lies convention and tradition and order, where “all is correct”. But on the other side of that sword, if you’re crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, “all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.” Her argument was that crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous.

Richard found himself praying all the time. His prayer was always the same. He kept begging God, “Please, please, please open my heart.” That was all he wanted – an open heart. And he would always finish the prayer for an open heart by asking God, “And please send me a sign when the event has occurred.” Now he says, recollecting that time, “Be careful what you pray for, cuz you just might get it.” After a few months of praying constantly for an open heart, what do you think Richard got? That’s right – emergency open-heart surgery. His chest was literally cracked open, his ribs cleaved away from each other to allow some daylight to finally reach his heart, as though God were saying, “How’s that for a sign?” So now Richard is always cautious with his prayers, he tells me. “Whenever I pray for anything these days, I always wrap it up by saying, “Oh, and God? Please be gentle with me, OK?”

“I am not laughing.” I was actually crying. “And please don’t laugh at me now, but I think the reason it’s so hard for me to get over this guy is because I seriously believed David was my soul mate.”
“He probably was. Your problem is you don’t understand what that word means. People think soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can’t let this one go. David’s purpose was to shake your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was his job, and he did great, but now it’s over. Problem is, you can’t accept that this relationship had a real short shelf life. You’re like a dog at the dump, baby – you’re just licking at an empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you’re not careful, that can’s gonna get stuck to your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it.”