Elizabeth Berg Quotes

I rarely think about my childhood. It's a slippery thing I can't keep hold of for long - it slithers out of my grasp. And a lot of the time I remember what was missing instead of what was there. I am a chronicler of absence.

I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.

The times that were most fun seemed always to be followed by sadness now, because it was when life started to feel like it did when she was with us that we realized how utterly gone she was.

It was the last time she’d see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn’t held it tighter when you had it every day.

[T]hese last few days where I've moped around damn near depressed for real, because of people who do not exist. Not really. I can buy them Christmas presents, but there is no way to send them. Sometimes I feel like I should be able to walk into the next room and there they will be, but they won't. These people do not exisit as flesh and blood, but there are different kinds of reality, and there are days when imagination feels very, very real.

homesickness is just a state of mind for me. i'm always missing someone or someplace or something, i'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. my life has been one long longing.

I'm bad at letting go of things.

In 1957's 'There's No You,' Sinatra is suspended at the intersection of a loss he can't face and a memory he can't relinquish.

There is something in the pang of change More than the heart can bear, Unhappiness remembering happiness.

I miss the game - I miss it a lot.

Of joys departed, not to return, how painful the remembrance.

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery

If I had any advice to give to anybody, it would be record your parents talking so that, when you're longing to hear that voice, you can play the tape. But for me, it's a little often. You don't always need to be reminded that he isn't here anymore.

All the best songs have an element of sadness.

I left parts of myself everywhere, The way absent-minded people leave Gloves and umbrellas Whose colors are sad from dispensing so much bad luck

McKenna will always be a part of me, no matter where he goes. They say that people who've lost a limb sometimes feel as if they still have it. How many times I've felt that McKenna was still here, and the empty space beside me was alive with his presence." She closed her eyes and leaned forward until her forehead and the tip of her nose touched the cool glass. "I love him beyond reason," she whispered. "He's a stranger to me now, and yet he is still so familiar. I can't imagine a sweeter agony, having him so close.

It's stupid, I know, but I care. All the things that meant so much when we were young. Under the blankets late at night, listening to long-distance radio. All those things lost now or broken. Can you remember? Can you remember that feeling? Perhaps I ought to go to a doctor.

I miss it every minute, and I have no wish at all to go back.

I just hope that you miss me a little when I'm gone.

We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.

The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.

For a second, I feel a sense of overwhelming grief: for how things change, for the fact that we can never go back. I'm not certain of anything anymore. I don't know what will happen--