"Stern Men" By Elizabeth Gilbert - Bargain Price

Elizabeth Gilbert's Stern Men just put on sale by Amazon.com for only $4.99. Save $8.96.

Published in 2000, Stern Men is Elizabeth Gilbert's first novel. In it she gives us a tough, lovable heroine against an iconoclastic, rural backdrop. Delightful.
Click here for more info and reviews.

Yes - These are Pictures of David

I took us a while to sleuth it, but we've found them, pictures of David, as in --

"All the complication and traumas of those ugly divorce years were multiplied by the drama of David -- the guy I fell in love with as I was taking leave of my marriage...I moved right in with David after I left my husband."

Condensed from page 18, Eat Pray Love softcover edition.

Liz Explains How She Paid for "Eat Pray Love" Trip

On NPRs Talk of the Nation (December 19, 2007) Liz explained that this is a frequently asked question. Here's her response --

"A little something called a book advance, which is not available to every traveler I'm well aware, but it's my fourth book. So before I went on the journey, I presented it to - I mean, I wouldn't have been able to go on the journey, especially after a really expensive divorce, so I presented it to the publishers and said, I'd like to write a book about this and, truly, I did want to write a book about it.

You know, as Joan Didion said, writing is the way I found out how I feel about something. I would not necessarily have wanted to go on that journey if I couldn't have used, you know, my craft of writing to sort of figure my way through it. I think it also - you know, knowing that you have to write about something makes you show up for the experience a little bit more. It kept me from being lazy. I knew that at the end, I had to distill all this and understand it, so it forced me every day to pay attention and to literarily take notes."

Quotes from Liz's Appearance on NPRs Talk of the Nation

On December 19, 2007 Elizabeth Gilbert was interviewed on NPR's Talk of the Nation.Here are a few of the quote-able highlights:

When The Whole World Knows Your Personal Life

"As anybody who would know me would testify, I mean, they could read the book or they could stand behind me in the supermarket line. I would give them all the same information anyway. It didn't seem like it would be true to my nature to hide any of it."

Romanticizing The Idea Of A Spiritual Journey

"We think that we have to actually change our nature in order to become in closer access to our divinity. And in reality, it's the opposite. You know, the closer you get to the Earth, the closer you get to your center, the closer you get to your own reality, you know, the easier time you're going to have having an honest encounter with the divine. Anything else is just like froufrou.

"There comes a moment where we realize, oh, actually, I am the custodian of my own selfhood. You know, nobody is going to take care of this for me. It's really my responsibility to get out there and figure it out for myself, and that's what that whole year of traveling was about for me."

Her Spiritual Path Now

"Meditation fits into my life as much as I'm able to put it in there. It's still something that I have to push myself to do. And it's still something I struggle doing. But that said, when I'm too far away from it, you know, I go too long without it, I feel its absence and I miss it. And it becomes a longing. I think we're pulled to spiritual journeys by a longing of the heart, you know? That's what it is.

I've heard the word despair described as, you know, absence from God, separation from God, you know, separation from the other. There's something out there that we want closeness to in order to get us through our journey."

Liz Explains Why She Married Felipe and How This Influenced Her Next Book

From her interveiew on NPR's Talk of the Nation on December 19 2007:

"I'm working on a new book that's also a memoir that's about marriage. It's about getting married after having been through a really bad divorce and becoming somebody who was not a believer in the institution.

"And my husband and I ended up getting married not necessarily because we wanted to. In fact, we desperately did not want to. We'd both been through really bad divorces, but because, like my friend Yudhi, we ran into a little trouble with Homeland Security and the INS and we were proposed to by an agent of Homeland Security at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport when they kicked Felipe out of the country.

"A nice man named Officer Tom sat us down and explained that perhaps, it was time we got married. it was sort of a very parental moment for the government to tell us that it was time we make ourselves decent citizens.

So the next book starts from there, and it's about, our travels for a year trying to get back into the country. And we did spend a lot of time with some of the same people, so I think they may show up again in print."

Liz Gives an Update on Yudhi, The Baliense Musician

Quoted from Elizabeth Gilbert on December 19, 2007 on NPRs "Talk of the Nation"

"Yudhi is a character in the book who I met when I was in Indonesia who was an Indonesian guy who had come to the United States and overstayed his visa and then married his true love who was also from Connecticut and then ended up getting deported by Homeland Security.

"He's still living in Indonesia. He and his wife have separated, and I think he's probably not coming back to the United States any time soon...if ever, . It's a very sad story. He's doing well. I mean, he's relaxing into his destiny, I guess I can say it that way.

I've seen him a couple of times since then I've been back and he's got a nice Indonesian girlfriend and he's playing music and he's doing well, but there's a hole in his heart the size and shape of Manhattan....That's a place in the world that he loved the most, and I don't think he'll ever get to see it again."

Liz Confesses: the One Paragraph She Wishes She Could Change in "Eat Pray Love"

"It's a paragraph that I rewrote about 20 times to try to get it right, and I didn't." Liz is referring to her discussion about how she went off of anti-depressants.

A caller into NPRs Talk of the Nation on December 19 2007 was concerned that how Elizabeth explains how she went off the anti-depressants makes it sound as though Elizabeth went off them without supervision which is potentially harmful to people who need these drugs.

In Liz's response, quoted below from the show, she never specifically states which paragraph (this will make more sense when you read it) but we believe that she is probably talking about this one (Bead 18, Page 52 -- paperback edition) which you can read in the box above.

Liz's response to the caller on NPR's Talk of the Nation --

"It would be that very paragraph to make it more clear. It's a complicated topic...and I was slowly weaning myself off them, actually under the supervision of my therapist back in New York.So it was not like one day I woke up and just stopped taking everything.

"I cut down very gradually over the course of a couple of months. And then finally, one day, I kind of came to my last Wellbutrin, and then dealt with the consequences and the results of that afterwards, which I write about in the book.

"It wasn't the easiest or most comfortable thing, but I did feel like I had used the medication as a bridge, to get to the other side of a really difficult time and that I was ready to take it on, on my own and ready to go back to it or go back to counseling if I needed that.

"So if it seemed in the book that I sort of cavalierly, you know, threw the pills down the toilet, that wasn't the case. What I wish I had said in there was that I have a lot of reservations about what I consider to be the vast over medication of Americans in general and specifically with, any sort of mood altering medication, which gets handed out, I think, a little more carelessly than it ought to.

"But I do wish that I didn't come across quite so much as somebody who had just tossed it. I agree that's not anything that should ever be done lightly. I also don't think that you should go on those medications lightly which is what I was more interested in writing about at the moment. But it's a complicated; it's a complicated issue. I have complicated feelings about it, and I was trying to get to the bottom of them. But I do wish I had put a couple of more sentences in there to be more clear about it."

Good News - Hardcover Edition Still Available of "Eat Pray Love"

Elizabeth Gilbert holding the hardcover edition of "Eat Pray Love"

Most of us were introduced to "Eat Pray Love" in paperback and our copies, frankly, look like they've also been around the world on a three continent tour.

Then we got the bright idea to see if the hardcover was still available. It was. So our replacement copy is a luxurious hard bound edition ($14.23 at Amazon) that frankly feels so much more substantial in our hands.

Click here to see if they are still available on Amazon.com

Eat Pray Love - Favorite Quotes - Bead 27

Chapter (Bead): 27
Context: Liz and Sophie are at the Pizzeria da Michele in Naples eating their margherita pizza with double mozzarella.

"I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza..."

Eat Pray Love - Favorite Quotes - Bead 18

Chapter (Bead): 18
Context: Liz remembering a time she moved towards her own reflection in mirrored doors of an elevator.

"Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend."

Elizabeth Returns to Oprah - Favorite Quotes

Another illuminating Oprah appearance. Some of our favorite quotes from Elizabeth's appearance --

"Eat Pray Love" as a Ladder
"I wrote this book to kind of create a word ladder to pull myself out of a very deep hole," she says. "I don't need that ladder anymore, so it's just sitting there in book form. To think that other people are now using it to tip it up against their dreams and kind of climb on up there is just incredibly touching."

Have a "Stillness & Question" Practice
"I really feel the one non-negotiable thing you need is to find a tiny little corner of your life, of your day, of stillness where you can begin to ask yourself those burning essential questions of your life," she says. " Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What am I here for?"

Liz's Biggest Piece of Advice Is...
Learn to say no. "Be realistic about what you can and cannot do in one day and one life".

Liz's Definition of God
"The perfection that absorbs. It is the perfectness of the universe which can bring you into that state where you are absorbed in that perfection, then you will know it. … I was absorbed in that perfection for a brief, glorious moment, and I knew something in that."

Richard From Texas Talks about "Soul Mates" During Second Oprah Appearance

During Elizabeth's second Oprah appearance (December 4, 2007), we got a scant few moments with Richard from Texas aka Richard Vogt. He was asked by Oprah to share his definition of the phrase "soul mates". He responded --

"A soul mate sometimes enters our life as someone to stir us up. To hold up the mirror so that we can see ourselves more clearly and antagonize us and make us so uncomfortable that we have to change because we can't continue to look at the same thing because we're looking at it clearly now. This is the reason a soul mate may not last forever. The encounter is so intense and so clarifying that we burn through those things quickly."

"Eat Pray Love" Movie is NOT Elizabeth’s Gilbert First Film

In 1997 Elizabeth wrote an article for GQ Magazine called "The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon".

In this article she discusses her career as a bartender in a lowdown East Village dive which became the basis for the film Coyote Ugly.

Meet Elizabeth Gilbert's Guru

Her name is Gurumayi Chidvilasananda and she is the head of the Siddha Yoga Meditation Lineage.

She hasn't has a public satsang (gathering) since January 1, 2004. Every year, on New Year's day, she would broadcast her annual message via audio and video around the world to her devotees. The last one was on January 1, 2004.

She is NOT in hiding; she is accessible at her ashrams, it's just that she's not traveling and teaching publicly. It is believed that this is due in part to the fact that she feels that she has given all the teachings and talks that are necessary. This decision was made two years BEFORE "Eat Pray Love" was released and year or more after Liz visited her Ashram in India.

If you are interested in Gurumayi, a great place to start is her book Sadhana of the Heart: A Collection of Talks on Spiritual Life which is a compilation of these New Year's messages. This book has enough "messages" for a lifetime.

Elizabeth Discusses the Movie Version of "Eat Pray Love" Starring Julia Roberts

In April 2007, Elizabeth said of the plan for the movie starring Julia Roberts --

"People have asked me if I’m afraid that the movie will ruin the book. But the movie can’t ruin the book ­only because the book is finished, completed, its own solid being. The movie can only ruin the movie. Which it might do, or might not do ­that’s sort of up to it. But I’m not even so worried about that.

"Also, I’m always a little surprised when writers sell their books to Hollywood and then criticize the results. I think, when it comes to selling things, you must be willing to let it go, or not sell at all. Trying to hold onto “control” of the product can be exhausting and useless; so many voices are involved in making a film that even the director, often, can’t totally control what a film becomes.

"Complaining for years about what Hollywood did to your book is sort of like selling your house to somebody and then driving past it for years, complaining about what the new owners did to the place. (“Geez, that pergola is awful!”) It’s not yours anymore, not in that form. You have to let it go, or don’t bother.

This book has been nothing but good to me, and nothing will ever change the goodness that it brought. Whatever comes next is just a fun and peculiar bonus, as far as I can see. Plus, really, I’m a great big Julia Roberts fan.

She’s Our Julia, you know, part of our cultural heritage and ­like many women aged 37, ­I grew up laughing and crying with her. I’ve missed her on the screen. (I know ­she’s been busy with other things.) If only as a fan, I’m happy she’s doing this."

Video Interview with Elizabeth about "Eat Pray Love"

This is a promotional film put together by her publishers. It's a good 4 minute overview.

Elizabeth Discusses Follow-Up Book to "Eat Pray Love"

Photo: Elizabeth Gilbert with her husband Felipe on their wedding day.


"Next comes a nonfiction book about marriage, actually. It's a long story, which, ­yes, ­does involve Felipe, whom I’m married. I set aside the novel [I was working on] because this is the story I want and need to explore right now, and the great benefit of being a writer is that you can use your vocation as a tool through which to understand questions that are vexing or fascinating you.

I’ve only ever written the book that I absolutely needed to write at that time, whatever it might be. For these last few years, that seems to be memoir, but I don’t think that will always necessarily be the case, once I’ve found the answers I need in my own life, in order to move on to other things."
Interview in "Nashville Scene" - April 2007

Video of Elizabeth Gilbert Giving a Speech about"Eat Pray Love"

Meet "Eat Pray Love's" Richard from Texas

Elizabeth met Richard at the Ashram in India. His real name is Richard Vogt and we all got to met him when he appeared with Elizabeth on Oprah.

About meeting Elizabeth he told Oprah "Well, she seemed like a combination of Henny Penny and Chatty Cathy.

"She had these issues of a lifetime swirling around her head like flies. And she was just kind of going around as if they weren't even there but yet trying to swat them away at the same time...

"It was the perfect thing to be happening to her. It was the perfect time for it to be happening, the perfect place."

About being featured in "Eat Pray Love" Richard from Texas he added:

"I knew she was writing this book, but I didn't realize what that meant. I didn't realize talking to a writer who is writing a book is like talking to a reporter. And things are being written down that I forgot I've said or situations that I forgot about. Suddenly I read it in a book and I go, 'Oh, my god. She was writing a book.'"

Richard From Texas Fans Go Crazy

We can't make this up. It's true. "Richard from Texas" fans have put together these fabulous t-shirts celebrating everyone's favorite Texas yogi.

Click here to see the entire Richard from Texas collection.

Liz Talks About Refining Your Mantra

From her Oct 5, 2007 appearance on Oprah:

Whatever you repeat constantly in your head is your mantra whether you know it or not. That is leading you on your way. So, if you're repeating, I'm a moron, I'm an idiot, I'm a failure, I'm a jerk, I'm a loser, that's your mantra.

So, decide whether that's working for you? And it might be, if that's, like, your destination or maybe it's not, and then maybe you might wanna choose a different thing to try to say whenever you remember that you're thinking what you're always doing.

Liz Reveals The Question To Ask Yourself Every NIGHT

From her Oct 5, 2007 appearance on Oprah:

"At the end of every day, write down the happiest moment of every day. It's my happiness journal. And it's a way of reminding myself what really makes me happy, and what doesn't. And you know, every day also has its crappiest moment of the day, but I decided not to keep a crappiest moment of the day journal. And learn, and study, and look back and see what is it consistently.

For me, what I've realized, it seems to have a lot to do with photosynthesis, a lot to do with sunlight, you know? So many of it is, like, I'm going to get my mail and the sunlight hits my shoulders and I think, I'm alive, you know? And that's it. I mean, that--there, done, happy moment of the day finished. Now you can go do all your chores."

Liz Reveals the Question To Ask Yourself Every MORNING

From her appearance on Oprah (Oct 5 2007) --

Wake up, with a journal, and ask "what do you really, really, really want?" You have to say, really, really, really three times or else you don't believe it. And answer it truthfully and do it again the next day, and the next day, and the next.

That's enough. It will come. It might be today, it might be the long term, but you start there. Because you can't set your journey if you don't know what you're for.

Liz Gilbert on Oprah - Our Favorite Quotes

From her Oct 5, 2007 appearance on Oprah:

WHAT ULTIMATELY LEAD HER TO MAKING THE LEAP
I felt like a squirrel in a box. That's what I'd come to feel like. You know? Just like, sort of clawing at the walls of my life...I never got the memo that said, you're not allowed to become the hero of your own life's journey, you know? I was never taught that you are not allowed to do that. And somehow I had lost that path along the way. And I just increasingly began to feel like, this is your life, and you are the only person who can be the hero of it.

GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO "NOT KNOW"
And I never knew at that age, in my 20s, that "I don't know" is actually a legitimate answer that you're allowed to say. You're allowed to say, I don't know, and you're allowed to ask for as much time as you need until you do know. And if somebody doesn't wanna give you that time, they're allowed to leave. But you're allowed to sit with your I don't know. And I never sat with it because it was uncomfortable. Nobody likes that place. And so I always said yes. Oh, sure. Let's move in together, let's get married, let's buy a house, let's do all this stuff that I was sort of half yes, half no.

WHY SHE STARTED HER "INTERIOR VOICE" JOURNAL
as I was trying to build myself back up, I thought, okay, I'm not doing this now. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get a journal and I'm gonna ask myself for help as though I was a friend, a dear loved one, and I'm gonna write back to myself everything I've always wanted somebody to say to me when I'm in my deepest despair. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I'm here. I'll always be here. And we know how to do that for other people.

I mean, who amongst us has not done that for a dear friend who calls in the middle of the night and you say, I'm here. I love you. You're great. We're going to pull through this. But we don't know how to turn that around and direct it towards the self.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STILLNESS
None of this works without stillness. One of the great, you know, teachings that I learned in India.

The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert

Originally published in 2002, the Last American Man is the true story of Eustace Conway who, at seven years old he could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree.

Such behavior might qualify Eustace as a potential Columbine-style triggerman, but in Elizabeth Gilbert's startling and fascinating account of his life, he becomes a great American countercultural hero.

At 17, Conway "headed into the mountains... and dressed in the skins of animals he had hunted and eaten." By his late 30s, Eustace owned "a thousand acres of pristine wilderness" and lived in a teepee in the woods full-time.

He is, as Elizabeth Gilbert implies with her literary and historical references, a cross between Davy Crockett and Henry David Thoreau.

Elizabeth has enormous enthusiasm for her subject, whether discussing Conway's need for alcohol to calm down; his relationship with a physically and emotionally abusive father; or his horrific hand-to-antler fight with a deer buck he was trying to kill, yet she always keeps her reporter's distance.

Click here for more info about The Last American Man on Amazon

"Pilgrams" by Elizabeth Gilbert

Published in 1997, Pilgrims is the first (and so far only) collection of Elizabeth Gilbert's short stories.

It is noted for breadth, range of setting, and subject matter. Each world her characters inhabit, whether ranchlands in the West or the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market, is authentic and fully realized.

These stories do not finish with clever twists or pat endings; we simply spend time with her characters and believe that they go on living after the story is finished.
Click here to see Pilgrams on Amazon