The Pull of the Moon Quotes

“I have wanted you to see out of my eyes so many times.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“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.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“It is such a terrifying thing to see a man cry.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“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

“Good weather will do this to people, bond them in their gratefulness.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“Some car had hit it after all, because it hadn’t had the courage to honor its own correct instinct. And I began to cry because I had this thought about people, that they do this all the time, deny the wise voice inside them telling them the right thing to do because it is different. I remembered once seeing a tea party some little girls had set up outside, mismatched china, decorations of a plucked pansy blossom and a seashell and a shiny penny and a small circle of red berries and a fern, pressed wetly into the wooden table, the damp outline around it a beautiful bonus. They didn’t consult the Martha Stewart guide for entertainment and gulp a martini before their guests arrived. They pulled ideas from their hearts and minds about the things that gave them pleasure, and they laid out an offering with loving intent. It was a small Garden of Eden, the occupants making something out of what they saw was theirs. Out of what they truly saw.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“I am so often struck by what we do not do, all of us. And I am also, now, so acutely aware of the quick passage of time, the way that we come suddenly to our own separate closures. It is as though a thing says, I told you. But you thought I was just kidding.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“What mattered was that at the end, someone who loved her sat by her, saying, I see you.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“What mattered was that at the end, someone who loved her sat by her, saying, I see you. I”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“This is not a novel about a woman leaving home, but rather a human being finding her way back.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“But why not get old, when what it means is more time with all that is here?”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“Life has its way, and it seems to me now that the object might only be to learn how to be graceful, to understand the value of a deep kind of acceptance.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“You know that hormones will course through you, whispering commands; that the pull of the moon will be shared by you and the ocean and the minds of wild things.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“Outside, it snowed; fat, lazy flakes, drifting with soft intention toward the place they were meant to land.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“You are where I unlock myself, where I say that I have often put down my wooden spoon to stare out the kitchen window to see the men I thought were magic for their story-telling or their way of walking, or the ones I was so strongly sexually attracted to, even though they weren't good people - at least not for me.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“the object might only be to learn how to be graceful, to understand the value of a deep kind of acceptance.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“Like a big wing was going to grow out your forehead, you’d be some kind of freak, when the truth is, happens to every one of us. Think of the poor men, she said, they got to go bald. And then they can’t even do it no more and that’s about 99 percent of their lives!”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“hurt me at first, too. But then it was over, and I saw I’d just been scared of it, that’s all, big black thing coming down the road at me all dressed up like death hisself. But then! Why, I come to see it was just a little pocket in my life, a small place, really. I remember telling my friend Katherine about it, she was a few years older than me, she was out hanging the sheets and I was setting on her back steps. I remember thinking it was the last day she’d get to do this for a while, the weather was turning. Anyway, I said, Katherine? I think I’m over all that blue way of thinking. And Katherine, she had her clothespins stuck in her mouth and she took them out and looked at me and said, well now, what did I tell you? You were running around waiting for something so terrible to happen.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“want you to play James Brown’s “I Feel Good.” Really, really loudly. I don’t care how old you are at the time or how you feel about James Brown, I want that song at my funeral.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

“Not long ago, I saw a woman in a drugstore pick something up in her hand, delighted, and hold it out toward her husband. It was just a perfume bottle, but the shape of it was lovely. “See this, hon?” she said. And the man said, “Yeah,” but he had his back to her and was walking down the aisle away from her. The woman put the thing back, diminished. Do you know what I mean, Martin? I think this comes from mistakes so many women make early on in a marriage. When we got engaged, I stopped driving my own car. I rode shotgun every time we were together. The default settings on the mirrors, on the closeness of the seat to the wheel, they were yours. Remember when that car caught on fire, the engine? Maybe it was auto grief. Don’t think I’m crazy, Martin. I have only gotten out my shovel, to dig a bit. I’m just pointing out what I uncover. You can look or not. I want the difference to be that I don’t put the thing back on the shelf because you say it’s not worth seeing.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon