Elizabeth Berg Quotes
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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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Whenever I write a novel, most of the time it starts with barest slip of an idea.
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Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it.
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People don't take you seriously, so you have to take yourself seriously.
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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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Women have a real talent for bearing up under hard times.
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Every book is its own experience, the writing of it.
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I always wrote as a vehicle for expression but did not try writing for publication until my mid-thirties, at which time I started writing for magazines. I wrote essays and then short stories, then moved into novels.
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I think Chicago is the best city in the country, hands down, but I don't like the winter there anymore.
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As for my 'real life,' yes, I do have friends who are different from me, and I find it refreshing being around them.
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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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You should not pay too much attention to what anyone tells you, including me. It's very, very important to follow your own map.
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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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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 think it's harder - much harder - to be a good parent than to write a book.
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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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I got married at twenty-five and had children right away, so I didn't have the worry that I would never get to have children.
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In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story.
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I think writers are born, not made.
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Writers have a reputation for being distracted. That's because writers are distracted. They are always tuned into that other voice, the one in their head that rarely turns off.
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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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When you have that deep kind of hunger that is part longing, what's better to eat than the best apple pie? Or the best potato salad and guacamole? Or the best deviled eggs and crab cakes and white chocolate raspberry pie?
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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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I do think that there's an art form to parenting, and I have nothing but admiration for those who do it well.