Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert details the author’s journey from New York to Italy, India, and Indonesia. It could be read as a travelogue, detailing experiences in varying cultures. But, what separates Eat, Pray, Love from most travelogues is the intensity with which you as a reader become engrossed in Gilbert’s emotional journey. Gilbert goes through a painful divorce and spends most of the book trying to find herself.

The book is captivating, heartwarming, heartbreaking, and hilarious. Gilbert’s style is casual in tone and it’s a comfortable and fun read.

Eat, Pray, Love is the type of book that contains so many anecdotes that any reader - especially travelers - will find a way to relate on some level.

Instead of walking you through the plot of the book, I’ve compiled some quotes that will give you a glimpse into Eat, Pray, Love:

“Some time after I’d left my husband, I was at a party and a guy I barely knew said to me, ‘You know you seem like a completely different person, now that you’re with this new boyfriend. You used to look like your husband, but now you look like David [her new boyfriend]. You even dress like him and talk like him. You know how some people look like their dogs? I think maybe you always look like your men.’”

“Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the ‘monkey mind’– the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit, and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined.”

“‘Forget about sightseeing–you got the rest of our life for that. You’re on a spiritual journey, baby. Don’t cop out and only go halfway to your potential.’
‘But what about all those beautiful things to see in India?’ I ask ‘Isn’t it kind of a pity to travel halfway around the world just to stay in a little Ashram the whole time?’
‘Groceries, baby, listen to your friend Richard. You go set your lily-white ass down in the mediation cave every day for the next three months and I promise you this- you’re gonna start seeing some stuff that’s so damn beautiful it’ll make you want to throw rocks at Taj Mahal.’”

“The former Catholic nun who oughtta know about guilt, after all wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Guilt’s just your ego’s way of tricking you into thinking that you’re making moral progress.’”

“‘You don’t want to go cherry-picking a religion’ [a friend tells Gilbert]
Which is a sentiment I completely respect except for the fact that I totally disagree. I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted… That’s me in the corner, in other words. That’s me in the spotlight. Choosing my religion.”

On the expatriate society in Bali: “Everywhere in this town you see the same kind of character–westerners who have been so ill-treated and badly worn by life that they’ve dropped the whole struggle and decided camp out here in Bali indefinitely, where you can live in a gorgeous house for $200 a month, perhaps taking a young Balinese man or woman as a companion, where they can drink before noon without getting any static about it, where they can make a bit of money exporting a bit of furniture for somebody. But generally, all they are doing here is seeing to it that nothing serious will ever be asked of them again. These are not bums, mind you. This is a very high grade of people, multinational, talented and clever. But it seems to me that everyone I meet here used to be something once (generally “married” or “employed”); now they are all united by the absence of the one thing they seem to have surrendered completely and forever: ambition. Needless to say, there’s a lot of drinking.”

I borrowed Eat, Pray, Love from the library, but I think I will buy a (used) copy; it’s the type of book I could read over and over again. Plus it highlights the benefits of slow travel.

I highly recommend Eat, Pray, Love as an inspiring book that will make you want to pack up your bags and leave tomorrow.