{"author":"Elizabeth Berg","author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg","total_quotes":50,"quotes":[{"text":"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 \u0026 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?","author":"Elizabeth Berg","tags":["love","marriage"],"id":12324,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg"},{"text":"The light is amber, the air still; the daylilies have folded in on themselves. Soon, the hooded blue of dusk will fall, followed by the darkness of night and the sky writing of the stars, indecipherable to us mortals, despite our attempts to force narrative upon them.","author":"Elizabeth Berg","tags":["air","amber","daylilies","dusk","night","stars"],"id":22976,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg"},{"text":"I was downstairs, reading.' Now?' I strained to see her face. She was smiling, it appeared.'Yes, now,' she said. 'It's nice, sometimes, to read in the middle of the night. The sky is so dark and soft-looking outside the window, all the stars out. You have just on light on, you know, and it seems to pour onto the page. Makes the book seem better. You are this little island, just up alone with a book. And you heard the night sounds of the house...It's so interesting to me, that sound. Time. The measure of it.","author":"Elizabeth Berg","tags":["book","light","measure","night","reading","solitude","sounds","time"],"id":42371,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg"},{"text":"If I could just have him until the day was over. Just a few more hours. But he was gone. I clasped my hand tightly over my mouth and felt a trembling that started deep inside move out to make all of me shake. I had a mighty impulse, it truly was mighty, to rise to my feet and howl. To overturn the chair and nightstand, to rip at my clothes, to bring down the very walls around us. But of course I did not do that. I pulled an elemental sense of outrage back inside and smoothed it down. I forced something far too big into something far too small, and this made for a surprising and unreasonable weight, as mercury does. I noticed sounds coming from my throat, little unladylike grunts. I saw that everything I’d ever imagined about what it would feel like when was pale. Was wrong. Was the shadow and not the mountain. And then, “It’s all right,” I said, quickly. “It’s all right.” To whom? I wondered later.","author":"Elizabeth Berg","tags":["death","loss"],"id":46672,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg"},{"text":"Are these real diamonds?' I once asked, and she said, 'Why have them if they're not?","author":"Elizabeth Berg","tags":["diamonds","real"],"id":48488,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg"},{"text":"And so, what of it all? What of me and my passions and personas, my great loves and failures of love, my writing, my politics? What of the clanging opinions, the endless queries as to the whys and wherefores of how I chose to conduct myself? In the end, there is but one answer to every question, whether it is spit at me or made as gentlest inquiry: I was I.","author":"Elizabeth Berg","tags":["being-your-true-self","choices-and-consequences","death","feminism","freedom","george-sand","individuality","life-and-living","living-your-best-life","passions","philosophy-of-life","politics","truthfulness"],"id":55605,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg"},{"text":"I don't hold Travis anymore, of course- not to read to him, or for any other reason, either. I wish I'd known that the last time was going to be the last time.","author":"Elizabeth Berg","tags":["children"],"id":65559,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg"},{"text":"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.","author":"Elizabeth Berg","tags":["happiness","joy","religion"],"id":65789,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg"},{"text":"This is one rule about mixing boys and girls: that a date always comes first.","author":"Elizabeth Berg","tags":["boys","couples","date","datenight","dating","elizabeth-berg","girls","joy-school","rules","teen","teens"],"id":73472,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg"},{"text":"If I were to draw on a paper what gym does for me, I would make one dot and then I would erase it.","author":"Elizabeth Berg","tags":["elizabeth-berg","exercise","gym","gym-class","joy-school","school","teen","teenager","teenagers","young"],"id":86985,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Berg"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":50,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}