Elizabeth Berg Quotes
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We're such imperfect beings. I think that's more often the case than not.
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Life is so fragile, so brief. And we seemingly work so hard at trying to ignore that.
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I think conflict is one of the things that makes for a good story.
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I think titles are extremely important for novels: They can set the tone, tip you off, serve as shorthand for what the essential contents are.
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I loved the 'Three Stooges.' I still do - nyuk, nyuk.
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It is one thing to see your friend dance around a table when she's 25, quite another thing to see her doing it when she's 62.
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Writing was always a release for me, a great joy. It wasn't work.
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We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading.
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When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads.
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Not being as self-contained as men, we need to share things: It's almost as though you only know what you feel about things after you share them with a woman.
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Ultimately, the less I know about what I'm doing, the better the work is.
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When you've written long enough, you see that there's a common theme in your work.
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No matter what you write, you need an active imagination.
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A ritual or tradition can be as simple as something you do every night, like read a story to a small child, or something you do weekly, such as go out for Chinese food.
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I like my house to feel like a place where I can just lie back and say, 'Ahhhhh, I'm home.'
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In writing a novel about George Sand, I hoped to present her as the talented, beguiling, complicated and occasionally infuriating woman I think she was, but I hope, too, that readers will enjoy the people she surrounded herself with.
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When I write, I operate as a writer and a reader both - I never know what's going to happen.
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If I could say anything to aspiring writers, it's to keep your own counsel, first and foremost.
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As a child, I saw my mother prepare for Christmas every year, and it never occurred to me that labor was involved. I thought it was my mother's joy and privilege to hang tinsel on the tree strand by strand, to make sure that every room in the house had a touch of Christmas, down to the Santa-themed rug and hand towels in the bathroom.
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Traditions insist upon themselves. Look around, and you will see them trying to exist everywhere, in everyone's life.
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It is true that all mothers do things differently from their own mothers, but they don't necessarily do them better.
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I've always felt an overwhelming need to get out what was inside. The vehicle for me was words on paper - not speech, not art, not dance, not anything else.
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It feels like my books come true. I write these things, and then they kind of end up happening. I wasn't divorced, for example, when I wrote a book about divorce.
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If I could visit dead authors, I'd head right over to E. B. White, though I'm so in awe of him I'd probably just sit at his feet and weep. He's the master of clarity, of understated humor, of palatable political conviction.