Elizabeth Gilbert — Choosing Curiosity Over Fear

And curiosity is an impulse that just taps you on the shoulder very lightly, and invites you to turn your head a quarter of an inch and look a little closer at something that has intrigued you.

One is that it’s all coming from me: Nothing funny is going on here; there is no spirit moving across the face of the earth. I’m just a pile of DNA, my cerebral cortex is firing off, and that is why my creativity exists, right? It’s all me; it’s only me — which is great, except then, how do you explain the mysterious part that you can’t explain, ab... See more

emboldening creativity, creative living; this way we can move through the world. And you say, as coming to the point where you can decide that “The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.”

That’s what I always think when I’m working on a project and it’s not working. I think — I will speak to the idea and say, “You came to me for a reason.” But in the meantime, I’ll come to my desk every day with the faith that you are also at my desk every day and that the two of us — this human being who is laboring and this mystery who is presenti... See more

I think curiosity is our friend that teaches us how to become ourselves.

when we step outside ourselves — that was a creative act, right? It was an act of curiosity.

And I think the third way is, it’s a collaboration between a human being’s labors and the mysteries of inspiration. And that’s the most interesting dance that I think you can be involved in, but you are very much an agent in that story. You’re not just a passive receptacle. And also, it’s not entirely in your hands. And standing comfortably within ... See more

ideas are conscious and living, and they have will, and they have great desire to be made, and they spin through the cosmos, looking for human collaborators.

I’m going to continue to speak about the questions that ignite and illuminate my existence within myself and in the world.

The more mystical and precious, in a way, that we make creativity and spirituality both, the more people get left out of it.