Quotes from Elizabeth Berg

Gretchen is sixty-nine years old and one of those former knockouts who just can't stop mourning the loss of her looks. She admits that if she didn't think God would punish her by making her die on the OR table—and if she could afford it—she'd have every bit of plastic surgery she could, head to toe. Gretchen knows she is shallow in this regard, but she kind of enjoys being shallow this way.

My way of looking at it is, who cares what happens before we're born and after we die? The question that has become increasingly important to me is, what do we do in the meantime?

This is what happens. You live past your time of importance and relevance and the world must be given over to the younger ones.

Right. What are they going to do, sue you for misrepresentation?

You always say that love and happiness are not for sale , that what is on your back and on your plate is second to what is in your heart.

woman is most beautiful when she is herself. The Japanese call it a beauty with 'inner implications.' It's not a show-off kind of thing, some peacock display of clothes and makeup and demeanor. It's quiet. Subtle. And here's the most interesting thing: Shibui relies on the ones looking at a person or an object to make something for themselves out

I can be with someone and everything is fine and then all of a sudden it can wash over me like a sickness, that I need the quiet of my own self. I need to unload my head and look at what I've got in there so far. See it. Think what it means. I always need to come back to being alone for awhile.

Everything about Paris fascinated me, including the politics. After the revolution, things were unstable but hopeful: new movements were springing up everywhere. One of them embraced the socialist ideal that property should be shared; another proposed that God was not a paternalistic figure but, rather, an androgynous one. There was communal living, and communal loving, as well.

She prefers cats to dogs, which is almost worse than being a conservative.

I also think you should take care of yourself. You can crack up a little when these things go on for so long. You've got to bring a healthy self in here. That will help him most. He needs to feel your strength. And you need to do what you have to keep it.

Right, I'll bet he's another vegetarian. Another Unitarian vegetarian who holds up peace signs at street corners every Saturday afternoon and aspires to live in a Mongolian yurt.

He resents the very posture of people who are online, the way they bend their backs over their various devices, blocking out any possibility that they might engage with a real live person, who would never come with enough apps to satisfy them

Working in the garden shows me the naturalness of it all, helps me to see that as much as I might resist the notion, I'm only one part of a bigger picture.

I sit in some long grass, watch for a while to see if I can find some ants working. The thing about watching ants is, you see some order and elegance to the whole works. And also is it a time of you wondering who is higher, really. But

the truth is that all anyone can do is take each day as it comes. To see life as an imperfect offering and focus always on making the best of what we have at any given moment. And to have faith in…well, whatever we can have faith in.

He says the only way to know yourself is to challenge yourself - in a hard way, so that you're really scared. He says what you do in times like that is what you are.

You know, Arthur," his mother said, "in time, you will find that little bits of happiness will make their way inside you and stay there. One little thing, and then one thing more. And then you'll realize that you're okay. You'll be okay, son, I promise you. You'll never forget him and you'll never stop missing him. But you'll be okay. And for you to be okay doesn't take a single thing away from Frank.

Abby was saying that all her illness had done was to make her love Link and Daddy more . And appreciate everything more. And to understand , in a way she never had before, that death was a natural part of life, just like the seasons in nature. And everybody's job was to love life while you had it and never to take anything for granted. It was hard to remember to do that, but it was worth it to try.

You know, if I've learned anything in my life, it's this: you can push away everything but love. It will not leave. It will wait. Unto death, it will wait. You might as well accept it. You might as well give it freely, too—even more than freely. Anything else is pure exhaustion.

have a problem with ageism, overt and especially covert. My feeling about a person's age is that it's a serving suggestion. It's up to you what you do with it: take it as offered, modify it, or ignore it altogether.

she feels a strange mix of emotions: a kind of excitement mixed with a vague sadness. A longing for a specific kind of inclusion she both aspires to and fears. And, oddly, she feels a sense of failure, of shame. She knows its nonsensical, but there it is, big inside her, this sense of having screwed everything up, of having lost something she never had.

He resents the very posture of people who are online, the way they bend their backs over their various devices, blocking out any possibility that they might engage with a real live person, who would never come with enough apps to satisfy them, let's face it.

It's good for you to be a bit uncomfortable from time to time, especially if you're only a few steps away from relief.

Or he could go back to the ease of solitude. It's really not so bad, being alone, never worrying about what has to be done for, or with, or in the interest of another. it's like you let your mind stay in its pajamas all day.