Elizabeth Berg Quotes
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No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story.
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Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I think it's harder - much harder - to be a good parent than to write a book.
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I think writers are born, not made.
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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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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 lived alone in Chicago, I had a lot of loneliness issues.
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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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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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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 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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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.
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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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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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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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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 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.