Elizabeth Berg Quotes

I don't really believe in rules, but I do like old-fashioned dating where you don't call the guy until he calls you. I don't think it's like he's got to do this and that's the rule.

Even a Menno sheltered from the world knows not to stick her tongue into the mouth of a boy who owns an Air Supply record. You might stick your tongue into the mouth of a boy who owned some Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but you would not date him on a regular basis, or openly.

You "have a date," you "go out with a date," you "groan because there isn't a decent date in town." A situation defined as containing a girl - or boy - of the right social background, the right degree of popularity, a little higher than your own.

I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.

When I was in high school, the genders were so separate from each other. If you weren't 'dating' somebody, you couldn't just be friends with somebody.

I don't think there's a date minimum or maximum. I don't get the whole 'All right, you've got to wait three days to call after the date.' If I got a number from a girl, I'd call that night. There's no science to it for me. You just do what it is that you feel like doing.

The hardest situation to pick up a girl in is ... in church and in Morocco on Ramadan. On Ramadan or one of those religious days? Try to pick up a girl is bananas.

In social matters, pointless conventions are not merely the bee sting of etiquette, but the snake bite of moral order.

I am sure there is a right way and a wrong way and in today's life, there are many different rules of being politically correct.

In my day, when you called on a girl, her mother was always hollering down to see if she was still unraped, the maid would look in, her father would shuffle his feet in another room. Today the boy calls up, says, 'Meet you at the back door of Stern's.'

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.

When it comes to dating, I'm straightforward and traditional with a twist.

There is too little courtship in the world.

I think feminism's a bit misinterpreted. It was about casting off all gender roles. There's nothing wrong with a man holding a door open for a girl. But we sort of threw away all the rules, so everybody's confused. And dating becomes a sloppy, uncomfortable, unpleasant thing.

If he invited you out, he's got to pay.

If a guy wants to take me out, he must seek my dad's permission first. That's just the way it works.

I begin to grow heartily tired of the etiquette and nonsense so fashionable in this city.

We don't do 'dating' in Sweden.

It's always been my personal feeling that unless you are married, there is something that is not very dignified about talking about who you are dating.

My parents were very strict with me when it came to boys and dating.

Every single young person is reachable. Ask them what dating is like in their country. Ask them if they have a girlfriend. Ask them what their type is. There's nobody who's too conservative to talk about that.

I tried to play the etiquette game - the respect game - for too long, and it didn't work out for me.

I shake hands on the first date.

Do you know you couldn't get a date with a $20 bill taped to your forehead?

Every man in the time of courtship and in the first entrance of marriage, puts on a behavior like my correspondent's holiday suit.