Quotes from Elizabeth Berg

This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.

When Arthur gets home, he pulls the mail from the box, brings it into the kitchen to sort through it, then tosses it all in the trash: junk mail. A waste of the vision he has left, going through it.

can never get enough time in here.

how accepting children can be—must be.

As for mending, I think it's good to take the time to fix something rather than throw it away. It's an antidote to wastefulness and to the need for immediate gratification. You get to see a whole process through, beginning to end, nothing abstract about it. You'll always notice the fabric scar, of course, but there's an art to mending: If you're careful, the repair can actually add to the beauty of the thing, because it is testimony to its worth.

She tries to be a good Christian. Jesus went around forgiving everyone, though her personal belief is that he went a little too far with that business.

When Lucille was a girl, a carnival came to town one summer and they had a ride called the Whirligig. You sat in some wooden contraption that jerked you here, there, and everywhere. One minute you'd be going forward, the next backward or sideways or tilted over so far you thought you might fall out. It was never still and you had no idea what might come next. That's life. You're born, and you get a ride on the Whirligig. She

beret sleeves.

specific miracle

The only thing wrong in making love was being intimate with one you in fact did not love.

warmth of her house settles around her. Come here, dearie, says the kitchen. Come and have a nice slice of cake.

YOU HAD TO SEIZE THE MOMENT, ACT ON A GOOD IMPULSE BEFORE EVERYTHING JUST DISAPPEARED.

those phones have become adult pacifiers.

Funny how important those birds have become to her. But people need something to depend on. They need something to love.

she allows herself to use it in between loads of laundry so she'll be happy about doing the laundry.

Arthur realizes that if he were alone, it would be a grim wait...with the girl, it's an adventure. That's what being with another does. He remembers now, with something like a full body flush. He remembers what it means to share something with someone. The particular alchemy that can light things up.

what I felt in that embrace was the knowledge that she would never be able to raise me, not by herself.

crust that's shared is finer food / Than banquets served in solitude.

But for the outstanding fact of polio, my mother was remarkably healthy;

I will come back as a little breeze," she says. "You will feel me on your face, and you will know that I'm still listening. So you can still talk to me.

MADDY FEELS HER MOTHER SOMETIMES AS A GLOW IN HER BRAIN, AS A KNOCK AT HER HEART, AS A WHISPER SHE CAN'T QUITE HEAR.

when you are aware you are dying, the path narrows, and there is room eventually for only one person—you, not distracted by anything else and therefore able to see all that couldn't be seen before. And that this can be such a great gift that you shiver inside at the taking of it.

What is it that makes a family? Certainly, no document does, no legal pronouncement or accident of birth. No, real families come from choices we make about who we want to be bound to, and the ties to such families live in our heart. Thank you for inviting my father, who is not my real family, but to whom I am also tied.

When he wrote down harebells, he told me that they looked delicate, but that they could grow between rocks.