Relationships
Eat Pray Love Summary & Review: Pleasure, Prayer, and a Life That Holds Both
Elizabeth Gilbert’s year in Italy, India, and Indonesia — pleasure, devotion, then balance — and a 7-day home version that doesn’t require…
Read Summary →
Elizabeth Gilbert
"Fear can ride along. It cannot drive."
Elizabeth Gilbert is the journalist and novelist whose memoir Eat Pray Love became a global phenomenon, and whose TED talk argued that genius is a visitor, not a personality you have to be. Big Magic (2015) is that stance in book form: creative living beyond fear for people who will never be full-time artists and for people who already are.
2 books·Memoir, creativity & self-inquiry
Books by Elizabeth Gilbert
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Productivity
Big Magic Summary & Review: Let Fear Ride, Not Drive
Big Magic summary: Elizabeth Gilbert’s stance on creative living beyond fear, plus a 7-day plan to let fear ride and still make…
Read Summary →Key Ideas & Recurring Themes
Ideas are looking for partners
Ideas visit. If you ignore them long enough, they are allowed to find another host.
Fear rides, it does not drive
Creativity triggers fear because the outcome is unknown. Give fear a seat. Keep the wheel.
Curiosity over passion
Passion is a heavy demand. Curiosity is a smaller question you can follow for twenty minutes.
Pleasure is a practice
Italy is food, language, and taking up space without treating joy as a moral failure.
Devotion is staying
You can change countries and still pack the same mind. Silence and mantra are reps.
Balance is both in one day
Ketut’s mix: smile, work, keep a practice. A good Tuesday holds a table and a prayer.
Notable Quotes
"Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome."— Big Magic
"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort."— Eat Pray Love
Related Authors
Book Author Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat Pray Love Summary & Review: Pleasure, Prayer, and a Life That Holds Both
Elizabeth Gilbert’s year in Italy, India, and Indonesia — pleasure, devotion, then balance — and a 7-day home version that doesn’t require a plane. Rated 4.4/5.
Big Magic Summary & Review: Let Fear Ride, Not Drive
Big Magic summary: Elizabeth Gilbert’s stance on creative living beyond fear, plus a 7-day plan to let fear ride and still make the thing. Rated 4.5/5.