We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine. Before you realize this truth... you will always be in despair.

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.