Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

The wittiest authors evoke a barely perceptible smile.

I heard Thackeray thank Heaven for the purity of Dickens. I thanked Heaven for the purity of a greater than Dickens - Thackeray himself.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn't think I could read, much less write.

This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's only read two.

I often joke that I could write 'War and Peace' and make it sound like Geri Halliwell wrote it.

A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

I can't get too offended when somebody parodies me.

Tolerance is you saying something crazy and me smiling and saying, 'That's nice.'

I think a playful critique is good for all of us, and that's basically how I see satire functioning. But I'm not interested in a kind of contemptuous satirical vision; I try always, even when I'm knowingly being satirical, to also be humane, but I mean, let's face it: there's plenty in American life to make fun of, and we all participate in it.

Most of what I write is comedy.

I've made a lot of crazy comedy videos and said a lot of crazy things. If it's too offensive, I apologize and move on, but I do comedy.

If you're able to put humor into something, just like it happens in life, you might get away with it.

And that's when he finally tells me his name is Ernest. I'm thinking of giving it away, though. Ernest is so dull, and Hemingway? Who wants a Hemingway?

I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a humorist. I have never been sure about it. In the middle ages, I should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burnt or hanged.

Yeah, well, we're all writers, aren't we? He's a writer that hasn't been published, and I'm a writer who hasn't written anything.

Chekhov, when it's done well and you're ready for it, can actually be quite funny.

Sometimes my humor does offend people, and I've said it before: I don't write jokes to be offensive. I write jokes to be funny, and I guess what I find funny are things that other people sometimes find offensive. I would love nothing more than to never offend anyone, but it just doesn't seem to work out that way.

Ah, yes! I wrote the "Purple Cow" - I'm sorry, now, I wrote it! But I can tell you anyhow, I'll kill you if you quote it!

I fell into writing, I suppose, being one of those awful children who wrote verses. I went to a convent in New York-the Blessed Sacrament... I was fired from there, finally, for a lot of things, among them my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion.

I would rather have written Fables in Slang than be President.

Do you get the feeling with Sarah Palin, in high school, she was voted least likely to write a book and most likely to burn one?

Ridicule more often settles things more thoroughly and better than acrimony.

Blessed are the common people. God loves them; that is why he made millions of them.

I respect everything I make fun of.

I have no plans to write an autobiography, I will leave that to others. I'm sure they will turn me into a homosexual or a Nazi spy or something else.