Quotes from Elizabeth Berg

As for the notion that everything has already been said, maybe it has, but life is like meatloaf: there are so many different ways to present it.

It will happen when you're not looking for it. Love likes to take you by surprise.

For me as a writer, it's so joyful to know that someone hears and responds to what I write.

No one wants to mother more vigilantly than a woman who is childless and wishes she wasn't.

I look to find the heart and soul of people, of my characters. I look for the truth of them and the truths about life that are presented through them.

Writers have a reputation for being distracted. That's because writers are distracted. They are always tuned into that other voice, the one in their head that rarely turns off.

As we continue to become a society of tweets, shorter and shorter messages, there's great value in the contemplation and reflection that comes from reading a long body of work.

I got married at twenty-five and had children right away, so I didn't have the worry that I would never get to have children.

I love to listen to people talk, especially when they're being really honest and they're not trying to sound any particular way.

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.

We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading.

It is true that all mothers do things differently from their own mothers, but they don't necessarily do them better.

I remember, as a child, wanting all the time to buy my parents presents. I stood around forlornly in fancy shops, unable to afford a single thing.

You should not pay too much attention to what anyone tells you, including me. It's very, very important to follow your own map.

I'm the kind of person who is entertained watching someone simply be themselves, whether they're putting their children to bed or making dinner or sitting at the table reading the morning newspaper.

I don't think men try to make women be like them, but I think women try to make men be like them, a lot.

I believe that the souls of women flatten and anchor themselves in times of adversity, lay in for the stay.

I know that sometimes it happens that a novelist is embarrassed about their early works. For me, it's the opposite: I believe 'Durable Goods' is the best thing I've written.

Nurses don't get paid very much. It didn't take long to realize that I could make more as a writer. I loved nursing, but I loved writing more.

I loved the 'Three Stooges.' I still do - nyuk, nyuk.

Ideas come from life: what happens in mine, what I see happening in others', mixed with a great deal of imagination. I might see a person in a grocery store and build a whole character and life out of what's in her basket.

No, I never thought that I would be a writer. I had always been told I could write well, but it never occurred to me that I might make my living that way.

Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it.

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