Quotes from Elizabeth Berg

These yanks into someone's personal past, that's the kind of history I like. Not wars, but who was your grandmother and what did she dream of? Did she walk up stairs to where she lived and what did it smell like and what was she wearing and who were her neighbors?

offering of love against fear. I had done it myself, determinedly made cards for my mother thinking that she would then have

Arthur feels an impulse to tell her he'd love to have her company anytime. He feels like she's the smallest little plant, dying from lack of water. But then he realizes he must tread carefully in this regard. People who don't feel cared for are not always comfortable being cared for.

There was in it a moment of indignity, nearly comedic - a feeling that I had lost my balance. But I had not.

A friend of hers once described such acts of kindness as hold knots on life's climbing rope.

The cookie tray goes round and round. Outside, the moon rises. The wind is still. All over town, leaves hang on trees like open hands.

I push pain away all day, and the moment I put my arms down it walks into me and has a seat. I

That's really important in trying to understand shibui. It sounds simple, like a cliché, really; but it's true: a woman is most beautiful when she is herself.

taking conversation where he finds it, but the crow flies away.

I think people see death as the hunter, but it's just the ticket taker, the timekeeper. It's the sound of a record playing in the background.

Life was curiously exhausting but also exhilarating.

I don't think you've even begun to realize all there is for you to love. And I know you better than anyone, and here's what I know about you: You have so much love to give! But I feel like you're all the time digging in the tomato bin, saying 'Where are the apples?

Don't we all want company in some form, are we not attracted to the idea of a body beside us in a thunderstorm, or another voice to help decide on dinner, to share astonishment at the latest political buffoonery or appreciation for the lush sets on Downton Abbey? Are we not, at our most basic, social animals, people who need other people, whether we want to or not?

The mystical teachings do not erase sorrow. They say, here is your life. What will you do with it?

Fate is a part of our lives. Another part is choice. But the biggest part is the mystery, the great unknowable, about which we feel so many things, including joy.

We go into the library, that layman's priory, that paper-scented oasis of quiet industry and calm.

If you get a cat because you just loooove cats, you're going to have plenty of days when you hate it because it's acting like a cat.

And when you lose something, you have to remember that then there is room for the next thing. And there is always a next thing.

the invisible dangers in a normal day wrought by overactive technology, fueled by greed. Soon we'll have a whole world meeting for the purpose of saying, "Oops. What should we do?

We can't help but make mistakes. The important thing is to keep trying. And to apologize when you need to.

But at one point, one of the women sighed and leaned her head against the bus window, and said, "Ah, you know. My one and only yous." Her friend laughed. "It's my one and only you." The other woman said, "No it isn't.

Though she could do nothing but stare at me, I feared her, mightily and distinctly. If she had told me to slap my own face, I would have. "Now go to bed," my mother said, and I did.

There is an algorithm for the way humans were designed: love and be loved. Follow it and you're happy. Fight against it and you're not. It's so simple, it's hard to understand.

People like to be addressed specificlly, it makes them important.