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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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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If there were a category in the Olympics for laundry, my mother would have been a gold-medal winner.
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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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I think writers are born, not made.
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I loved the 'Three Stooges.' I still do - nyuk, nyuk.
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Women have a real talent for bearing up under hard times.
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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 don't have a medicine cabinet.
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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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People don't take you seriously, so you have to take yourself seriously.
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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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Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it.
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I remember, as a child, wanting all the time to buy my parents presents. I stood around forlornly in fancy shops, unable to afford a single thing.
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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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When I lived alone in Chicago, I had a lot of loneliness issues.
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No matter what you write, you need an active imagination.
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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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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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I suppose writing nonfiction did prepare me for writing fiction. Whenever you write anything, you're honing your skills for writing anything else.
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The world of literature is so rich and so enriching. The value is inestimable of what reading does for you.