From the introduction by Eliezer Sobel

"Gabrielle worshipped at the feet and beat of the Divine Feeling Feminine—the nurturing Mother, the mischievous Mistress, and the mystical Madonna—bowing to the Sacred and outrageous, while firmly rooted in the Soul, the Imagination, and the bottoms of her two feet on the ground. The sorrowful heart of humanity was excruciatingly evident to her on the wild streets of New York City, where she observed the profound wounds of our culture on the subway—(okay, she almost exclusively took cabs)—and in the throbbing beat of incessant boom boxes, the very pulse of the city moving up from the pavement through her veins and feet, schooling her in the customs of the local inhabitants. Like a scout sent ahead to survey the terrain, she brought her findings back to guide us in how to navigate our shared, chaotic surroundings, how to surf the wild waves of our times, how to dance a tango with our collective, cataclysmic cosmos.

And...as many here will report, Gabrielle Roth was also quite an ordinary—albeit hilarious—woman who loved shopping and shoes and meeting over a cup of tea in the Village to talk about clothes, movies and men, her three favorites being her son Jonny, husband Rob—Robert to everyone else—and George Clooney. I used to assume that I must have been next on that list, but then slowly realized that at least 1,437 other men believed the same thing.

It was truly uncanny: nearly everyone who interacted with Gabrielle, whether for a moment or for years, always felt very special, as if they and they alone had a precious and unique connection with this unusual woman, this mystic. And the fact is, they did. Person after person, literally thousands all over the world, felt their own version of the same phenomenon. It remains incomprehensible that one woman could deeply connect on such a deep soul level with virtually everyone with whom she came into contact, but that was Gabrielle’s astounding and rare gift: the ability to offer all of her attention and presence to the person standing before her, to bypass their persona and intimately see and speak directly to their inner brilliance, their dormant creative genius and vulnerable heart. It was love at first sight—or rather, soul at first sight— over and over and over again. People felt truly seen and touched in their very core. Inside her gaze there was nowhere to hide, and nothing to hide. She was a human x-ray machine who could see through bones into the marrow of one’s life force itself."