Quotes from Elizabeth Berg

You are always in my thoughts. When you were little, I knew your whereabouts at any given moment. Now that you are...off on your own, I still always know where you are, because I keep you in my heart.

You are born into your family and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges.

Don't let your habits become handcuffs

If I were to draw on a paper what gym does for me, I would make one dot and then I would erase it.

I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.

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

Never be afraid of doing the thing you know in your heart is right, even if others don't agree.

Sometimes you know before you know.

Now, on this road trip, my mind seemed to uncrinkle, to breathe, to present to itself a cure for a disease it had not, until now, known it had.

Anything we have, we are only borrowing. Anything. Any time.

books are like confort food without the calories

I have wanted you to see out of my eyes so many times.

There is love in holding, and there is love in letting go.

One thing I have always been is too short. It's adorable when you're in junior high. After that, it's a pain in the ass for the rest of your life.

But it seemed to me that this was the way we all lived: full to the brim with gratitude and joy one day, wrecked on the rocks the next. Finding the balance between the two was the art and the salvation.

Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.

It is never about how good your voice is; it is only about feeling the urge to sing, and then having the courage to do it with the voice you are given.

She sits down and puts her hand to her chest and rocks. Thinks of all she has lost and will lose. All she has had and will have. It seems to her that life is like gathering berries into an apron with a hole. Why do we keep on? Because the berries are beautiful, and we must eat to survive. We catch what we can. We walk past what we lose for the promise of more, just ahead.

I hoped we never had to realize all the opportunities we missed in this life.

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.

The friends in my real life do tend to be smart and funny and creative. I am lucky!

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.

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?

Women have a real talent for bearing up under hard times.