Elizabeth Berg Quotes
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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 never was a big believer that you can teach writing per se.
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The friends in my real life do tend to be smart and funny and creative. I am lucky!
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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.
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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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Traditions are the inventions of people who mean to routinely put love and comfort and meaning into their lives and in the lives of those they live with.
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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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If I'm on the road for Random House, I'm presenting a book with the hope people will buy it.
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Writing was always a release for me, a great joy. It wasn't work.
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Ultimately, the less I know about what I'm doing, the better the work is.
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I don't really like questions about the writing process, because the truth is I don't know how I write.
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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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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 do think that there's an art form to parenting, and I have nothing but admiration for those who do it well.
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As we continue to become a society of tweets, shorter and shorter messages, there's great value in the contemplation and reflection that comes from reading a long body of work.
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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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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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People don't take you seriously, so you have to take yourself seriously.
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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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People see 'tradition' as something stultifying, old, and rigid, nothing that has meaning or application for us today. But families shouldn't have to follow the blueprint of the old. They can make family traditions out of whatever makes them feel comfortable and helps bring a sense of order and stability to their lives.
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No matter what you write, you need an active imagination.
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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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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.