Stephanie Kordan > Stephanie's Quotes

“Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“There is no technique, there is just the way to do it.
Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.”
― Frances Mayes, In Tuscany

“A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I think I deserve something beautiful.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“It's still two human beings trying to get along, so it's going to be complicated. And love is always complicated. But humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I was full of a hot, powerful sadness and would have loved to burst into the comfort of tears, but tried hard not to, remembering something my Guru once said -- that you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It's safe. Let go.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn't want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Like most humans, I am hungry...our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it...”
― M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical Me

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Authentic inspiration endows individuals with mental or spiritual energy which they are then able to transform into positive action. It can make all the difference between a man, woman, or child allowing despair to permanently paralyze any dreams they may have for their lives, or, exercising sufficient strength of will to make those dreams a reality.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

“There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“It answers the question that was tormenting you: my love, you are not 'one thing in my life' - not even the most important - because my life no longer belongs to me because...you are always me.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

“A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.”
― Rumi, Words of Paradise: Selected Poems of Rumi

“Beauty surrounds us.”
― Rumi

“Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.”
― Rumi

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”
― Rumi

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”
― Rumi