Elizabeth Berg Quotes
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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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With 'Durable Goods,' I meant only to write about being an army brat. What emerged was a story about compassion - the need for it, the expression of it.
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The world of literature is so rich and so enriching. The value is inestimable of what reading does for you.
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When I look at my own work, I see love, loss, and loneliness. Part of it might be that I was an army brat. I moved around all the time. There was a sense of nothing being permanent.
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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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When I lived alone in Chicago, I had a lot of loneliness issues.
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I don't have a medicine cabinet.
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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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When I lived in Boston, I had an office that I rented because I found it wonderful to go away from my house to work: It was so quiet, and I couldn't go to the refrigerator or do the laundry.
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I never meant to write about the experience of losing a good friend to breast cancer when I was going through it. But after it was over, I realized that although something deeply sad had happened, something truly beautiful also had.
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Sometimes the best reading comes just by accident. Someone talks about a book, or you're just wandering the stacks in the library, and you find a book that you love.
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Really, my sacred place is my study where there are books that I love and things that people have given me.
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My mother and her five sisters have always been living examples of the great love that can exist among sisters - and in a large family.
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No, I never thought that I would be a writer. I had always been told I could write well, but it never occurred to me that I might make my living that way.
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It usually takes about a year to write each book. I don't plan it that way. I don't set deadlines. If a book wants to take longer, it can.
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The process of writing and creating and answering that very unique call inside yourself has nothing to do with agents and sales and all that stuff.
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For me as a writer, it's so joyful to know that someone hears and responds to what I write.
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I know that sometimes it happens that a novelist is embarrassed about their early works. For me, it's the opposite: I believe 'Durable Goods' is the best thing I've written.
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Never try to copy other writers, and never try to have a formula. It has to come from your heart and soul.
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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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Ideas come from life: what happens in mine, what I see happening in others', mixed with a great deal of imagination. I might see a person in a grocery store and build a whole character and life out of what's in her basket.
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My mom used to keep all her Christmas cards in a basket bedecked with red ribbon, and I loved to look at them all and read all the letters.
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I can't decide if I'm a hippie or elegant older woman, a farmer's wife, a crazy person.
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My favorite splurge is homemade chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream or a Sausage McMuffin with egg or scalloped potatoes or turkey yanked right off the carcass and dipped in gravy or See's chocolate.