Quotes by Elizabeth Berg - Page 2 | QuoteForever

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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Agents
Answering
Sales
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I look to find the heart and soul of people, of my characters. I look for the truth of them and the truths about life that are presented through them.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Heart And Soul
Life Truth Heart
Presented
Truths
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Army
Brat
Compassion
Goods
Durable
Emerged
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Comfort
Love Live People
Inventions
Traditions
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Me Living Way
Occurred
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Dance
Overwhelming
Paper
Vehicle
Inside
Art Always Me
Anything Else
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Self Contained
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It feels like my books come true. I write these things, and then they kind of end up happening. I wasn't divorced, for example, when I wrote a book about divorce.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Divorce
For Example
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We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Good Writing
More Than Anything
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Accident
Wandering
Talks
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Chinese Food
Every Night
Ritual
Small Child
Weekly
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In this wide world, I don't think that there's just one person for any of us. I think we look until we find one that feels right, and oftentimes, it works out just fine.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Just One
Wide
Oftentimes
Wide World
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Embarrassed
Goods
Best Believe Me
Durable
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Distracted
Reputation
Turns
Rarely
Tuned
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Contemplation
Great Value
Messages
Reflection
Work Society Great
Tweets
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Army
Brat
Loneliness
Loss
Permanent
Love Time Work
Love Work Time
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I'm nuts about the South - the people, the language, the food, the land, the stories and writers that come from there - but it's hard to know whether I'll use it as a location again.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Location
Nuts
Food People Know
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It is a happy day when I am asked to publicly recommend a book. It is also a dilemma. When I consider all the books I have loved and depended upon and profited from, how can I pick just one?
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Dilemma
Just One
Depended
Publicly
Recommend
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Boston
Laundry
Go Away
Refrigerator
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The process is different for every book, but there are similarities. I always draw from the inside out. I don't plot them ahead of time, and I'm always surprised by things that happen in my books.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Plot
Similarities
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I'm the kind of person who is entertained watching someone simply be themselves, whether they're putting their children to bed or making dinner or sitting at the table reading the morning newspaper.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Entertained
Newspaper
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Cake
Chocolate
Chocolate Cake
Cream
Gravy
Homemade
Ice
Ice Cream
Potatoes
Sausage
Vanilla
Favorite
Egg
Off
Turkey
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One of the great pleasures in writing 'The Dream Lover' was learning about some of the real people who populated George Sand's life. What a cast of characters! And what a pleasure to recreate them upon the page!
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Sand
Life Learning Great
Lover
Real People
Recreate
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Essays
Publication
Vehicle
Time Always Try
Short Stories
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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?
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Apple Pie
Chocolate
Eggs
Hunger
Longing
Pie
Salad
Apple
Cakes
Crab
Potato
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Basket
Great Deal
Grocery
Grocery Store
Mixed
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Awe
Clarity
Conviction
If I Could
Understated
Authors
Master
Visit
Weep
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You need a place to work that works for you, and you need people to understand that when you are writing, you are doing a rarefied type of brain surgery and therefore should not be subject to a million random interruptions.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Brain Surgery
Interruptions
Surgery
Rarefied
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Breast Cancer
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Infuriating
Sand
Talented
Herself
Hoped
Occasionally
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Some people read an interesting or provocative newspaper article, and that's the end of that. A writer reads such an article, and her imagination gets fired up. Questions occur to her. She might feel an urge to finish the story that the article suggests.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Provocative
Article
Finish
Newspaper
Occur
Reads
Urge
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Oh just wait. It takes a lot of time, that's all...You'll have come to a certain kind of appreciation that moves beyond all the definitions of love you've ever had. A certain richness happens only later in life. I guess its' a kind of mellowing. p 80 talking about marriage and husbands
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Smile
Husband
Love You
Moving
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Everybody complains about getting older, but I find it such a rich time of life. There are negative things about it, I suppose, but more than that, I'm finding it to be a very positive experience in which growth suggests itself in a much more alluring way than it did when I was young - isn't that funny?
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Alluring
Getting Older
Complains
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Application
Stability
Family Today People
Blueprint
Rigid
Traditions
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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.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Christmas
Bathroom
Involved
Joy
Labor
Privilege
Tinsel
Tree
Christmas Mother Me
Christmas Me Tree
Touch
Saw
Hand
Hang
Occurred
Room
Prepare
Rug
Strand
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When I wrote 'Home Safe,' I wanted to look at a number of things: the mystery and joy and pain of creativity. What happens when a vital safety net is suddenly removed. The difficulty some people have in growing up. The way a deep love can be as crippling as it is satisfying. But mostly, I wanted to look at the mother-daughter relationship.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Deep Love
Difficulty
Safety
Safety Net
Satisfying
Love Home Relationship
Crippling
Love Relationship Home
Net
Vital
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There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Happiness
Quilts
Children
Laughter
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Well, anyway, her death changed our lives for the better, because it brought a kind of awareness, a specific sense of purpose and appreciation we hadn't had before. Would I trade that in order to have her back? In a fraction of a millisecond. But I won't ever have her back. So I have taken this, as her great gift to us. But. Do I block her out? Never. Do I think of her? Always. In some part of my brain, I think of her every single moment of every single day.
Elizabeth Berg / Writer
Smile
Block
Taken
Thinking
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