Elizabeth Gilbert

Julie Mancini was a comet. She shot across the firmament of so many people’s lives, including my own, and she lit us all up with her reflected splendor. Whatever she believed in, she believed in completely — and if you were lucky enough to be one of the people she believed in, she would advocate for you with relentless power and conviction. She did this for me, many years before the world knew my name. She believed in me. She gave me a chance. She convinced strangers who had never heard of me to give me jobs. She told me that I could be a public speaker, long before I ever had that idea myself. In so doing, she helped me to create another aspect of my being. (I mean: If Julie Mancini says you’ve got something to offer the world, then it must be true, right?) I loved her charm, her laugh, her style, her intellect, her refusal to take anybody’s shit. She was one of the most vivid people I’ve ever met. Life (and its losses) has taught me something really interesting about the vivid people: They don’t really go away when they die. Their vividness remains — as if something so bright and wild and original as this spirit cannot be extinguished by so mundane a process as death. The pure shine of such people doesn’t go out. It can’t. Julie’s vividness will remain for generations, I am certain, in thousands of sparkling fractals of memory and love. She will continue to light up the sky. What else could she do but shine on? Once a comet, always a comet.  

--Elizabeth Gilbert

(#1 Bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic, City of Girls)