Elizabeth Berg
I don't really like questions about the writing process, because the truth is I don't know how I write.
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.
When I write, I operate as a writer and a reader both - I never know what's going to happen.
Life is so fragile, so brief. And we seemingly work so hard at trying to ignore that.
If I could visit dead authors, I'd head right over to E. B. White, though I'm so in awe of him I'd probably just sit at his feet and weep. He's the master of clarity, of understated humor, of palatable political conviction.
I loved the 'Three Stooges.' I still do - nyuk, nyuk.
I think writers are born, not made.
I think the most important quality for a writer to have is empathy.
I think conflict is one of the things that makes for a good story.
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.
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 hope to show the great worth of women. So far as I'm concerned, we're still underappreciated.
Ultimately, the less I know about what I'm doing, the better the work is.
I'm nuts about the South - the people, the language, the food, the land, the stories and writers that come from there - but it's hard to know whether I'll use it as a location again.
Elvis is symbolic of a lot of things, dreams coming true being one of them.
As for my 'real life,' yes, I do have friends who are different from me, and I find it refreshing being around them.
I find life a mix of humor and pathos, and all my books reflect that to one degree or another.
The friends in my real life do tend to be smart and funny and creative. I am lucky!
I never meant to write about the experience of losing a good friend to breast cancer when I was going through it. But after it was over, I realized that although something deeply sad had happened, something truly beautiful also had.
I think it's harder - much harder - to be a good parent than to write a book.
I like my house to feel like a place where I can just lie back and say, 'Ahhhhh, I'm home.'
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've always felt an overwhelming need to get out what was inside. The vehicle for me was words on paper - not speech, not art, not dance, not anything else.
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.
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 suppose writing nonfiction did prepare me for writing fiction. Whenever you write anything, you're honing your skills for writing anything else.
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.
It is one thing to see your friend dance around a table when she's 25, quite another thing to see her doing it when she's 62.
People don't take you seriously, so you have to take yourself seriously.
Writing was always a release for me, a great joy. It wasn't work.
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 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.
Women have a real talent for bearing up under hard times.
Not being as self-contained as men, we need to share things: It's almost as though you only know what you feel about things after you share them with a woman.
When you've written long enough, you see that there's a common theme in your work.
Never try to copy other writers, and never try to have a formula. It has to come from your heart and soul.
The world of literature is so rich and so enriching. The value is inestimable of what reading does for you.
Traditions insist upon themselves. Look around, and you will see them trying to exist everywhere, in everyone's life.
Traditions are the inventions of people who mean to routinely put love and comfort and meaning into their lives and in the lives of those they live with.
People see 'tradition' as something stultifying, old, and rigid, nothing that has meaning or application for us today. But families shouldn't have to follow the blueprint of the old. They can make family traditions out of whatever makes them feel comfortable and helps bring a sense of order and stability to their lives.
Some people read an interesting or provocative newspaper article, and that's the end of that. A writer reads such an article, and her imagination gets fired up. Questions occur to her. She might feel an urge to finish the story that the article suggests.
My characters are like my children in a way. I create them, and then I worry about them forevermore.
I've been to Iowa many times before. You have to love Iowa, or you're not an American.
No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story.
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.
If I'm on the road for Random House, I'm presenting a book with the hope people will buy it.
I love libraries, as anyone who has a brain does.
For me as a writer, it's so joyful to know that someone hears and responds to what I write.
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.