Best 107 quotes of Elizabeth Berg on MyQuotes

As a writer, you should have a sticky soul; the act of continually taking things in should be as much a part of you as your hair color.

As far as I'm concerned, the most important thing you need when inventing characters is empathy.

books are like confort food without the calories

But in spite of my great desire for intimacy, I've always been a loner. Perhaps when the longing for connection is as strong as it is in me, when the desire is for something so deep and true, one knows better than to try. One sees that this is not the place for that.

But it seemed to me that this was the way we all lived: full to the brim with gratitude and joy one day, wrecked on the rocks the next. Finding the balance between the two was the art and the salvation.

Don't let your habits become handcuffs

Do you think that people ever really do believe they will die, that the world will just go along as always without them? I wonder if we aren't all a little surprised at the moment of crossover, if we don't look back over our shoulders saying, Now hold on.

For all it's problems and difficulties, life is mostly a wonderful experience, and it is up to each person to make the most of each day. I hope you are successful in your life, but look to the heavens and the earth and especially to other people to find your real wealth. Wherever I am, wherever you go, know that my love goes with you.

He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the good place, and a heart-shaped leaf lay trapped in the hollow if his throat as though it were planned, though of course it was so perfect it couldn't have been planned.

How important things had become, now that they were gone!  I felt a sudden panic that I would soon forget everything.

I believe that the souls of women flatten and anchor themselves in times of adversity, lay in for the stay.

I believe that the souls of women flatten and anchor themselves in times of adversity, lay in for the stay. I've heard that when elephants are attacked they often run, not away, but toward each other. Perhaps it is because they are a matriarchal society.

I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.

I felt myself trapped in line for a ride I was not nearly ready for, looking back but moving forward in the only direction I could go.

I hate banana bread. It's too suspicious-looking. I always thought the cooked banana looked like insect legs.

I have wanted you to see out of my eyes so many times.

I made cranberry sauce, and when it was done put it into a dark blue bowl for the beautiful contrast. I was thinking, doing this, about the old ways of gratitude: Indians thanking the deer they'd slain, grace before supper, kneeling before bed. I was thinking that gratitude is too much absent in our lives now, and we need it back, even if it only takes the form of acknowledging the blue of a bowl against the red of cranberries.

...in my head, a person who was out walking and walking in the dark comes to a little house with a light on. Waits at the door for a moment, and then goes in finds such a welcome that she stays.

In the classics section, she had picked up a copy of The Magic Mountain and recalled the summer between her junior and senior years of high school, when she read it, how she lay in bed hours after she should have gotten up, the sheet growing warmer against her skin as the sun rose higher in the sky, her mother poking her head in now and then to see if she'd gotten up yet, but never suggesting that she should: Eleanor didn't have many rules about child rearing, but one of them was this: Never interrupt reading.

I remember once when we were moving, driving across country, and it was raining so hard, the windshield wipers going fast and squeaking, and then: nothing.  It stopped.  I looked out the window ahead of me and it was clear.  I looked out the back and there was the rain, still going.  Nobody said anything, but there it was, a near miracle, a rain line, a way of seeing just where something starts, when usually you are just in the middle of it before you notice it.  That's how it feels to me now, to not want to be like (that) anymore.  I see the line.

I remove my wedding rings and put them in the jewelry box. So many others have done this. I am not the only one. I am not the only one. But here, I am the only one.

It feels like some part of me that was curled down and waiting in the dark has risen, and now stands stretching and strong in the sunshine. I knew it.

I think one of the reasons we have children is to believe everything all over again. And I'm not talking Santa, here, either.

I thought of the priest who'd told me that many religions hold that it is easier to be closely connected to people we love after death than before.

It is never about how good your voice is; it is only about feeling the urge to sing, and then having the courage to do it with the voice you are given.

It's amazing how smart the body is. Though maybe we could do without loving. I think it's overrated, and I think it's too hard. You should only love your children; that is necessary, because otherwise you might kill them. But to love a man? It's overrated, and it's too hard and I will never, ever do it again.

It seems like people are all the time making themselves themselves, but they don't really know it. You can only have true vision when you look behind. A person can slide so fast into being something they never really intended. I wonder if you can truly resurrect your own self.

I turn off the radio, listen to the quiet. Which has its own, rich sound. Which I knew, but had forgotten. And it is good to remember.

I will come back as a little breeze. You will feel me on your face, and you will know that I am still listening. So you can still talk to me.

I wondered what my father had looked like that day, how he had felt, marrying the lively and beautiful girl who was my mother. I wondered what his life was like now. Did he ever think of us? I wanted to hate him, but I couldn't; I didn't know him well enough. Instead, I wondered about him occasionally, with a confused kind of longing. There was a place inside me carved out for him; I didn't want it to be there, but it was. Once, at the hardware store, Brooks had shown me how to use a drill. I'd made a tiny hole that went deep. The place for my father was like that.

I would make an anonymous call and say, this is someone who cares, do you know what kind of children you have?

Just one look and then I knew that all I longed for long ago was you

Make time for prayer and reflection; try to understand your value as a man on earth but see, too, your proper place in the scheme of things. It may sound funny to say this, but I have come to see that we are all far more important and less important than we think.

My inside self and my outside self used to match.  A compass needle pointed true north.  Now the needle spins around and around indicating the sad direction of nowhere.

My mind was in my heart, anchored like a bright kite in a safe place.

Never be afraid of doing the thing you know in your heart is right, even if others don't agree.

No one wants to mother more vigilantly than a woman who is childless and wishes she wasn’t.

Oh just wait. It takes a lot of time, that's all...You'll have come to a certain kind of appreciation that moves beyond all the definitions of love you've ever had. A certain richness happens only later in life. I guess its' a kind of mellowing. p 80 talking about marriage and husbands

Outside, the rain sometimes comes down so hard, we have to talk louder, and it feels like a miracle that the roof holds. It makes for a coziness and a gratefulness, too, that you have the choice to not be out in it. You can sit at the table and look out the window and not have to feel what you see.

People say you should give until it hurts. I say you should give until it stops hurting. Know what I mean?

Reading Claire Cooks novel is like eating some exotic dish about which you say, Wow, this is great! Whats in it? The ingredients here are: intelligence, humor, poignancy, revelation and, perhaps best of all, true originality. Ready to Fall seems to me to be ready to soar.

Remember me in your dreams, as I will you.

Ruth has friends like other people have wardrobes. I mean that there's someone for every occasion.

She sits down and puts her hand to her chest and rocks. Thinks of all she has lost and will lose. All she has had and will have. It seems to her that life is like gathering berries into an apron with a hole. Why do we keep on? Because the berries are beautiful, and we must eat to survive. We catch what we can. We walk past what we lose for the promise of more, just ahead.

Sometimes I try to remember things my mother told me about the awful way he was raised. But why does he have to keep on going? Why would you take something bad out of your mouth and hand it to another, saying, Here, eat this?

The heart of myself has always been something just wanting so bad. I have had an empty center, black as a basement, but also knowing about light and waiting. Young as I am, I know now that everything is about to come. Jimmy will be the place for me to learn the real happiness. He will be my Joy School. My joy. Mine.

There are people who have never studied writing who are capable of being writers. I know this because I am an example. I was a part-time registered nurse, a wife, and a mother when I began publishing. I'd taken no classes, had no experience, no knowledge of the publishing world, no agent, no contacts ... Take the risk to let all that is in you, out. Escape into the open.

There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.

There are some things you never say good-bye to

There is incredible value in being of service to others.