""There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.

-The Art of Mending"


"
— 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."
— Elizabeth Berg

"...I hadn't realized how much I'd been needing to meet someone I might be able to say everything to."
— Elizabeth Berg (Talk Before Sleep: A Novel)

"You are born into your family and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges."
— Elizabeth Berg (The Art of Mending)

"Sometimes you know before you know."
— Elizabeth Berg (Range of Motion)

"There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt sqaure, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead."
— Elizabeth Berg

"I always think incipent miracles surround us, waiting only to see if our faith is strong enough. We won't have to understand it; it will just work, like a beating heart, like love. Really, no matter how frightened and discouraged I may become about the future, I look forward to it. In spite of everything I see all around me every day, I have a shaky assurance that everything will turn out fine. I don't think I'm the only one. Why else would the phrase "everything's all right" ease a deep and troubled place in so many of us? We just don't know, we never know so much, yet we have such faith. We hold our hands over our hurts and lean forward, full of yearning and forgiveness. It is how we keep on, this kind of hope."
— Elizabeth Berg (Talk Before Sleep: A Novel)

"Well, most women are full to the brim, that's all...We are, most of us, ready to explode, especially when our children are small and we are so weary with the demands for love and attention and the kind of service that makes you feel you should be wearing a uniform with "Mommy" embroidered over the left breast, over the heart...If a stranger had come up to me and said, "Do you want to talk about it? I have time to listen," I think I might have burst into tears at the relief of it. p 38 "
— Elizabeth Berg (The Pull of the Moon)

"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."
— Elizabeth Berg (Talk Before Sleep: A Novel)

"Do you think that people ever really do believe they will die, that the world will just go along as always without them? I wonder if we aren't all a little surprised at the moment of crossover, if we don't look back over our shoulders saying, Now hold on."
— Elizabeth Berg (The Day I Ate Everything I Wanted: Stories)

"I wondered what my father had looked like that day, how he had felt, marrying the lively and beautiful girl who was my mother. I wondered what his life was like now. Did he ever think of us? I wanted to hate him, but I couldn't; I didn't know him well enough. Instead, I wondered about him occasionally, with a confused kind of longing. There was a place inside me carved out for him; I didn't want it to be there, but it was. Once, at the hardware store, Brooks had shown me how to use a drill. I'd made a tiny hole that went deep. The place for my father was like that."
— Elizabeth Berg (We Are All Welcome Here)

"Anything we have, we are only borrowing. Anything. Any time."
— Elizabeth Berg (True to Form)

"Martha Raye slipped up to the colonel and she said, 'Sir, where do we eat?' He said, 'You mess with the men.' 'I know that,' she said, 'but where do we eat?"
— Elizabeth Berg (Dream When You're Feeling Blue: A Novel)

"Oh just wait. It takes a lot of time, that's all...You'll have come to a certain kind of appreciation that moves beyond all the definitions of love you've ever had. A certain richness happens only later in life. I guess its' a kind of mellowing. p 80
talking about marriage and husbands"
— Elizabeth Berg (The Pull of the Moon)

"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."
— Elizabeth Berg