You know the old adage: Plant an expectation, reap a disappointment.
Elizabeth GilbertRead
One of these poems I wrote after having been here only a month. The other, I wrote this morning. In the space between the two poems, I have found acres of grace
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the growth and transformation an artist experiences over time.
Elizabeth Gilbert's quote highlights the profound journey of creative expression, emphasizing how time and experience can lead to significant artistic development. From the initial poem, created shortly after arriving in a new place, to the one written after a month of exploration, she illustrates how the 'acres of grace' found in that span represent the depth and richness that can emerge from conscious engagement with one’s surroundings and inner self.
Themes
CreativityGrowthTransformationArtisticExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop about creative writing, this quote could inspire participants to reflect on their growth.
More from Elizabeth Gilbert
All quotes →Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.
Elizabeth GilbertRead
I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either, but profound happiness, even soaring happiness. And what could possibly bring a person more soaring happiness than romantic love.
Elizabeth GilbertRead
When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being--and a normal one, at that?
Elizabeth GilbertRead
And when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt - this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life no matter how slight.
Elizabeth GilbertRead
But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilling yearnings.
Elizabeth GilbertRead
Similar quotes
No art is any good unless you can feel how it's put together. By and large it's the eye, the hand and if it's any good, you feel the body. Most of the best stuff seems to be a complete gesture, the totality of the artist's body; you can really lean on it.
Frank StellaRead
If you practice for ten years, you may begin to please yourself, after 20 years you may become a performer and please the audience, after 30 years you may please even your guru, but you must practice for many more years before you finally become a true artist-then you may please even God.
Ali Akbar KhanRead
I write what I don't know. It's way more interesting.
Patrick RothfussRead
When I enter that higher-order space that's required to write, I'm a better human. For whatever my writing is, wherever it's ranked, it definitely is the one place that I get to be beautiful.
Junot DiazRead
When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope.' Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
Pablo PicassoRead
My subject matter was a genuine sort of experience that came out of my life, particularly the American world in which I was privileged to be . . . . I would really think of the bakery counters, of the way the counter was lit, where the pies were placed, but I wanted just a piece of the experience. From when I worked in restaurants . . . [it was] always poetic to me.
Wayne ThiebaudRead