Writing Quotes by Elizabeth Berg

I never was a big believer that you can teach writing per se.

— Elizabeth Berg

I think writers are born, not made.

— Elizabeth Berg

I think the most important quality for a writer to have is empathy.

— Elizabeth Berg

Writing was always a release for me, a great joy. It wasn't work.

— Elizabeth Berg

Every book is its own experience, the writing of it.

— Elizabeth Berg

No matter what you write, you need an active imagination.

— Elizabeth Berg

“Now there's some honest writing!”

— Elizabeth Berg

If I could say anything to aspiring writers, it's to keep your own counsel, first and foremost.

— Elizabeth Berg

For me as a writer, it's so joyful to know that someone hears and responds to what I write.

— Elizabeth Berg

As a writer, you should have a sticky soul; the act of continually taking things in should be as much a part…

— Elizabeth Berg

When you've written long enough, you see that there's a common theme in your work.

— Elizabeth Berg

Whenever I write a novel, most of the time it starts with barest slip of an idea.

— Elizabeth Berg

Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it.

— Elizabeth Berg

I tend not to write books that are really, really long, and I'm also a pretty fast writer.

— Elizabeth Berg

When I write, I operate as a writer and a reader both - I never know what's going to happen.

— Elizabeth Berg

We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn…

— Elizabeth Berg

Writing is, of course, a solitary occupation. But for many writers, myself included, it's through writing that we make certain vital connections.

— Elizabeth Berg

Nurses don't get paid very much. It didn't take long to realize that I could make more as a writer. I loved…

— Elizabeth Berg

“Nothing helped until the day she took a tablet and pencil into the basement and moved the event out of her and…

— Elizabeth Berg

Some people read an interesting or provocative newspaper article, and that's the end of that. A writer reads such an article, and…

— Elizabeth Berg

You feel the call. That's the important thing. Now answer it as fully as you can. Take the risk to let all…

— Elizabeth Berg

One of the great pleasures in writing 'The Dream Lover' was learning about some of the real people who populated George Sand's…

— Elizabeth Berg

I'm nuts about the South - the people, the language, the food, the land, the stories and writers that come from there…

— Elizabeth Berg

“For ten years before I began writing for a living, I worked as a registered nurse. Never mind that the work was…

— Elizabeth Berg

There are people who have never studied writing who are capable of being writers. I know this because I am an example.…

— Elizabeth Berg

“The best thing that can happen to me when I'm writing fiction is to lose sight of the fact that I'm writing…

— Elizabeth Berg

When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads.

— Elizabeth Berg

No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story.

— Elizabeth Berg

In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story.

— Elizabeth Berg

Never try to copy other writers, and never try to have a formula. It has to come from your heart and soul.

— Elizabeth Berg

If I don't feel like writing on a certain day, I just go to the cafe and hang around.

— Elizabeth Berg

I don't really like questions about the writing process, because the truth is I don't know how I write.

— Elizabeth Berg

“She thinks it was Margaret Atwood who said that wanting to meet a writer because you like their work was like wanting…

— Elizabeth Berg

I always wrote as a vehicle for expression but did not try writing for publication until my mid-thirties, at which time I…

— Elizabeth Berg

The process of writing and creating and answering that very unique call inside yourself has nothing to do with agents and sales…

— Elizabeth Berg

You need a place to work that works for you, and you need people to understand that when you are writing, you…

— Elizabeth Berg

In writing a novel about George Sand, I hoped to present her as the talented, beguiling, complicated and occasionally infuriating woman I…

— Elizabeth Berg

I never meant to write about the experience of losing a good friend to breast cancer when I was going through it.…

— Elizabeth Berg

No, I never thought that I would be a writer. I had always been told I could write well, but it never…

— Elizabeth Berg

Writers have a reputation for being distracted. That's because writers are distracted. They are always tuned into that other voice, the one…

— Elizabeth Berg