As I focus on diligent joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once -- that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.

The memoir was on the New York Times Best Seller List of non-fiction in the spring of 2006 and in October 2008 after 88 weeks the book was still on the list at number 2. She is best known for her 2006 memoirs Eat Pray Love which as of December 2010 has spent 199 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and was also made into a film by the same name in 2010. Along with her only sister novelist and historian Catherine Gilbert Murdock Gilbert grew up on a small family Christmas tree farm in Litchfield Connecticut.

Gilbert (born July 18 1969) is an American author essayist short story writer biographer novelist and memoirist. She is best known for her 2006 memoirs Eat Pray Love which as of December 2010 has spent 199 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and was also made into a film by the same name in 2010.