Laurie Frankel: "We've always been living a fairy tale..."

 "We've always been living a fairy tale... From the moment we met. From the moments before we met. we have this perfect love story. we have this love story that feels like a fairy tale and must be because how else to explain something so magical? But the problem with fairy tales is that they end, and quickly too. The lead-up is everything. Then you get transformation, love, and happily-ever-after all in one breath. That story's nice, but it's not big enough to hold us. There's no room for the hard parts. There's no room for the transformations and the loves that come next and next and next. You know what's even better than happy endings? Happy middles. All the happy with none of the finality. All the happy with room enough to grow."

- from This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel

Elizabeth Gilbert: "We just keep on..."

"We just keep on trying, again and again, no matter how ill-advised it may be, to recreate Aristophanes' two-headed, eight-limbed figure of seamless human union."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "Marriage is not prayer..."

"Marriage is not prayer. That's why you have to do it in front of others. It's a paradox, but marriage actually reconciles a lot of paradoxes: freedom with commitment, strength with subordination, wisdom with utter nincompoopery, etc. And... you have to hold your wedding guests to their end of the deal. They have to help you with your marriage; they have to support you if you falter."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "Marriage has a bonsai..."

"Marriage has a bonsai energy: It's a tree in a pot with trimmed roots and clipped limbs. Mind you, bonsai can live for centuries, and their unearthly beauty is a direct result of such constriction, but nobody would ever mistake a bonsai for a free-climbing vine."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "Marriage is what happens..."

"Marriage is what happens between the memorable."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "She sewed winter coats..."

"She sewed winter coats for her children from the leftover material of her heart's more quiet desires."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "They adjust, adapt, glide..."

"They adjust, adapt, glide, accept. They are mighty in their malleability, almost to the point of a superhuman power. I grew up watching a mother who became with every new day whatever that day required of her. She produced gills when she needed gills, grew wings when the gills became obsolete, manifested ferocious speed when speed was required, and demonstrated epic patience in other more subtle circumstances."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "I do believe that..."

"I do believe that one must at least try to understand one's mother's marriage before embarking on a marriage of one's own."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "Like most of us..."

"Like most of us, this woman contains multitudes."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "They cut up the..."

"They cut up the finest and proudest parts of themselves and gave it all away. They re-patterned what was theirs and shaped it for others. They went without. They were the last ones to eat at supper and they were the first ones to get up every morning, warming the cold kitchen for another day spent caring for everyone else. This was the only thing they knew how to do. This was their guiding verb and their defining principle in life: They Gave."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed (on the subject of mothers)

Elizabeth Gilbert: "Money brings its own..."

"Money brings its own problems, of course - but money also brings options. Money can buy child care, a separate bathroom, a vacation, the freedom from arguments over bills - all sorts of things that help stabilize a marriage."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "Leaving a blighted marriage..."

"Leaving a blighted marriage is not necessarily a moral failure, then, but can sometimes represent the opposite of quitting: the beginning of hope."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "Perhaps transcendence can be..."

"Perhaps transcendence can be found not only on solitary mountaintops or in monastic settings, but also at your own kitchen table, in the daily acceptance of your partner's most tiresome, irritating faults."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "There is hardly a...

"There is hardly a more gracious gift that we can offer somebody than to accept them fully, to love them almost despite themselves."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "I mean, once the..."

"I mean, once the initial madness of desire has passed and we are faced with each other as dimwitted mortal fools, how is it that any of us find the ability to love and forgive each other at all, much less enduringly?"

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "So it will come..."

"So it will come to pass for all of us - for all couples who stay with each other in love - that someday one of us will carry the shovel and the lantern on behalf of the other. We all share our houses with Time, who ticks along side us as we work at our daily lives, reminding us of our ultimate destination."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "After all, doesn't every..."

"After all, doesn't every romance begin in the same place - at that same intersection of affection and desire, where two strangers always meet to fall in love?"

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "Infatuation is not quite..."

"Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love; it's more like love's shady second cousin who's always borrowing money and can't hold down a job."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "It is the perogitive..."

"It is the perogitive of all humans to make ludicrous choices, to fall in love with the most unlikely of partners, and to set themselves up for the most predictable of calamities."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

Elizabeth Gilbert: "The vows that we..."

"The vows that we make on our wedding day are a noble effort to belie this fragility, to convince ourselves that - truly - what God Almighty has brought together, no man can tear asunder. But unfortunately God Almighty is not the one who swears those wedding vows; man (unmighty) is, and man can always tear a sworn vow asunder."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed