A biography for Elizabeth Berghasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“The things that brought me the most comfort now were too small to list. Raspberries in cream. Sparrows with cocked heads. Shadows of bare limbs making for sidewalk filigrees. Roses past their prime with their petals loose about them. The shouts of children at play in the neighborhood, Ginger Rogers on the black-and-white screen.”
“My mother and her five sisters have always been living examples of the great love that can exist among sisters - and in a large family.”
“It feels like my books come true. I write these things, and then they kind of end up happening. I wasn't divorced, for example, when I wrote a book about divorce.”
“If I'm on the road for Random House, I'm presenting a book with the hope people will buy it.”
“You should not pay too much attention to what anyone tells you, including me. It's very, very important to follow your own map.”
“In this wide world, I don't think that there's just one person for any of us. I think we look until we find one that feels right, and oftentimes, it works out just fine.”
“I turn off the radio, listen to the quiet. Which has its own, rich sound. Which I knew, but had forgotten. And it is good to remember.”
“Sometimes the best reading comes just by accident. Someone talks about a book, or you're just wandering the stacks in the library, and you find a book that you love.”
“I think it's harder - much harder - to be a good parent than to write a book.”
“How are poets able to unzip what they see around them, calling forth a truer essence from behind a common fact? Why, reading a verse about a pear, do you see past the fruit in so transcendent a way?”
“No, I am not my mother. I am deeply, endlessly grateful for what she did and who she was, but I am a different kind of person.”
“I just cannot stand an unmade bed.”
“I suppose writing nonfiction did prepare me for writing fiction. Whenever you write anything, you're honing your skills for writing anything else.”
“No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story.”
“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.”
“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.”
“You don't do so well with marriage. I don't think you've begun to realize all there is for you to love. And I know you better than anyone & 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?”
“A ritual or tradition can be as simple as something you do every night, like read a story to a small child, or something you do weekly, such as go out for Chinese food.”