Elizabeth Berg

“There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.”

“Just one look and then I knew that all I longed for long ago was you”

“For all it's problems and difficulties, life is mostly a wonderful experience, and it is up to each person to make the most of each day. I hope you are successful in your life, but look to t...”

“I will be so glad for you to hear not the sounds of gunfire but the sounds of church bells, and of people working in peace.”

“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,...”

“There I was, waiting, afraid I’d never experience the kind of joy yet to come, but hoping for it just the same.”

“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 exper...”

“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...”

“I have not been in a book club where there were any men, and I have not, in fact, heard of book groups that were mixed.”

“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 t...”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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...”

“I think titles are extremely important for novels: They can set the tone, tip you off, serve as shorthand for what the essential contents are.”

“I can't decide if I'm a hippie or elegant older woman, a farmer's wife, a crazy person.”

“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 pe...”

“The world of literature is so rich and so enriching. The value is inestimable of what reading does for you.”

“I think it's harder - much harder - to be a good parent than to write a book.”

“Writing was always a release for me, a great joy. It wasn't work.”