Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

Risks are a measure of people. People who won't take them are trying to preserve what they have. People who do take them often end up having more.

It's way easier to stay in the comfort zone, especially when things are going good than to go out on a limb and take some risks. My philosophy is exactly the opposite: Sometimes it's risky not to take a risk.

Seek opportunity, not security. A boat in the harbor is safe, but in time its bottom will rot out.

I've always been quite careful about what I wanted to do. I've just never wanted to revisit old ground or do something that's easy. I want to do something that I would look at and go, "I don't know what to do!" The most exciting thing is when you're a bit scared, so I'm looking to find something that's really terrifying.

If you scared to take chances, you'll never have the answers...

None of us understand what we're doing, but we do beautiful things anyway.

The biggest risk in life is not risking.

We have a society that's trying to make sure that nobody gets any adventures because adventures are dangerous and danger is bad.

I think it's worthwhile to expand your comfort level and just do something awful. I wasn't trying to make music for money.

I always felt that if you're not trying something different each time out of the gate, you're being safe, and you don't ever want to find that place of safety. I like that, each time, before I even go in front of the cameras, the studio's reaction will be fear.

Artists of all disciplines must be willing to go into the dark, let go control, be surprised.

being afraid to take chances is scarier than actually doing things that challenge you.

I'm widest awake as a writer doing something new, engaged in a process I'm not sure I can finish, generating at the edge of my powers. Some people bungee jump; I write.

To force yourself out of the comfort zone, the main ingredient is trying to work in a world where you haven't been before, that you don't know the rules of. And that involves a lot of research, so you begin to see where the other people have been, but you are starting from as vulnerable and as low a point as possible.

The idea of actually taking sharp turns left and right has always intrigued me, but I've never really been bold enough to do that. As musicians go, I've allowed myself to be carried by other people's enthusiasm into places where I've learned a lot. There is no real tumult anymore. What I want to do, I do! I'm pretty fortunate.

I want to be able to challenge myself. And do things that are away from what I usually do. Stand-up is safe for me. I can do stand-up in front of twenty-five thousand people, and I'm like, "I know how to do this. This is what I do." I want to be a little scared.

So many people are frightened to take a chance in life and there's so many chances you have to take.

I am much more happy doing what I know I can do than what I am not sure I could do.

To create something new is both thrilling and excruciating at the same time. It's great to have all these choices in front of you, and to have the writers in the room so you know exactly what they meant. But the downside is you want so badly not to screw it up!

I find myself going to places where I really have no business, speaking to these people in a whole other field that I have no extensive knowledge of. But I do it very often because it scares me.

People fear leaving their safe harbor of the known and venturing off into the unknown. Human beings crave certainty - even when it limits them.

I've been scared and I've liked not hanging on to stuff where I know that I'm in my comfort zone.

I know Charlie Kaufman really well, for instance. Charlie Kaufman starts a story, and he has no freaking idea where he's going. None. Zero. And he doesn't want to know, because there's a little bit of death in that.

Any creative process is about being in a territory which isn't secure, isn't necessarily familiar, and isn't convenient in any sort of way. And that's the excitement of it.

It might be scary because you're taking a risk, but at the end of the day you can say you tried.