Arthur Berg Quotes

What is it that makes a family? Certainly no document does, no legal pronouncement or accident of birth. No, real families come from choices we make about who we want to be bound to, and the ties to such families live in our hearts.

People who don’t feel cared for are not always comfortable being cared for.

Everybody makes mistakes, sometimes even before we get up in the morning. We can’t help but make mistakes. The important thing is to keep trying. And to apologize when you need to.

Oh, Arthur, no one even sees you when you get old except for people who knew you when you were young.

hiraeth, a Welsh word that means a homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or that maybe never was; it means nostalgia and yearning and grief for lost places.

Arthur thinks that, above all, aging means the abandonment of criticism and the taking on of compassionate acceptance.

I'll love you forever in darkness and sun, I'll love you past when my whole sweet life is done.

The one to tell. The one to be told by. For him, that was marriage.

Sometimes I wonder what the world would sound like if everybody stopped their complaining. It sure would be a quiet place.

Frank, saying, Who cares what happens before we’re born and after we die? The question is, what do we do in the meantime?

What girls do to each other is beyond description. No Chinese torture comes close.

Actors, painters, dancers, comedians, even just ordinary people doing ordinary things, what are they without an audience of some sort? See, that's what I do. I am the audience. I am the witness, I am the great appreciator that's what I do and that's all I want to do. I worked for a lot of years. I did a lot of things for a lot of years. Now, here I am in the rocking chair, and I don't mind it, Lucille. I don't feel useless. I feel lucky.

No, love is never foolish. Or unnecessary

I miss you,” he says. “I still miss you, sweetheart. Every day is like the first day I lost you.

aging means the abandonment of criticism and the taking on of compassionate acceptance.

I don’t think it’s foolish. I don’t think love is ever foolish.

Everybody has thoughts that shame them. You can’t control them coming in. But you don’t have to let them all out.

See, that’s what I do. I am the audience. I am the witness. I am the great appreciator, that’s what I do and that’s all I want to do. I worked for a lot of years. I did a lot of things for a lot of years. Now, well, here I am in the rocking chair, and I don’t mind it, Lucille. I don’t feel useless. I feel lucky.

Oh. maybe little kids are trouble, sometimes, but only for a good reason: They are tired. They are hungry. They are afraid. He supposes a great many ills of adults might be cured by a nap or a good meal or a bit of timely reassurance. But adults complicate everything. They are by nature complicators. They learned to make things harder than they need to be and they learned to talk way too much.

But losing weight for health reasons is a very dull prospect, doomed at the outset. Losing weight for romance, that’s altogether different.

Hiraeth: a Welsh word that means a homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or maybe never was; it means nostalgia and yearning and grief for lost places.

Funny how an animal can hurt your feelings when you’re all alone.

sometimes he just can’t help but think that there really is a grand plan. In a way, it reminds him of square dancing, how you can see the pattern fully only by looking at it from above, by not being a part of it.

And she finally told Nola that she was so worried about whether she could love two children, about whether she could make room in her heart for as much love as she felt for Bobby. Wasn't it betraying Bobby, to love another child? And Nola told her what her sister Patricia had said, after having her second. Patricia said she felt like she'd grown a second heart.

He tells her that, when Nola first died, he thought he’d die himself, of the sorrow. He says he’d read that grief has a catabolic effect and he thought for sure it would take him right out, this immense and gnawing pain, that it would eat him alive from the inside out. But it didn’t. It took a long time for him to shift things around so that he could still love and honor Nola but also love and honor life, but it happened. And it will happen to her.

I think the kind of love that comes after romantic love is the best, richest love of all. At some point, I think we all want someone we can look ugly around, reveal our vulnerabilities to, and, most important, trust. And as a former nurse, I found that when people are at their most vulnerable, at their “ugliest,” is when they’re the most beautiful. In this novel, I think true love is saying, “I see you wholly and I love you anyway.

The important thing is to keep trying. And to apologize when you need to.

Some things come true. They might come true in ways different than we might have predicted, but some things do come true

No, love is never foolish. Or unnecessary.

He tells her that, when Nola first died, he thought he’d die himself, of the sorrow.

Everybody has thoughts that shame them. You can't control them coming in, but you don't have to let them all out. That's the crux of it.

Silence, and then, "How old are you?" Maddy asks, and Arthur tells her eighty-five. Then he asks her how old she is. "Eighteen," she says. "Almost." Eighteen. The word is a poem.

People who don't feel cared for are not always comfortable being cared for.

We might be criminals, but we’re not totally immoral. - Arthur Berg

She doesn’t exactly know why kids don’t like her. She’s good-looking enough. She has a sense of humor. She’s not dumb. She guesses it’s because they can sense how much she needs them. They are like kids in a circle holding sticks, picking on the weak thing. It is in people, to be entertained by cruelty.

For everything there truly is a season; if his life’s work has not taught him that, it has taught him nothing. The birth of spring, the fullness of summer, the push of glory in the fall, the quiet of winter.

She goes back to bed, turns out the light, and can hear herself start to snore before she falls off into sleep. She doesn’t know why so many people hate snoring. She finds it soothing. White noise, with a ruffle.

Steven sits back in the booth, crosses his arms. “My wife was cremated.” “Your wife…?” “She died when Maddy was two weeks old.” “Oh, my. My goodness. That’s a hard one. Boy, oh, boy. That must have been hard.” “It never goes away. Never does.” Arthur leans forward. “The pain, you mean?

She believes that her last chance for love just died, and her last chance was her first love, and there is something about that that is awfully hard to bear. Think about it. To know you’re at the end of hoping for love and to realize that something else will have to do, if you’re going to have any reason to go on.

Men were ever men.

I’ll love you forever in darkness and sun, I’ll love you past when my whole sweet life is done,

emotions that fuel love are ageless; they live in our heart, and therefore operate independently of our bodies.

Rolf van der Berg was the right man, in the right place, at the right time; no other combination would have worked. Which, of course, is how much of history is made.

Isn’t life funny. It could drive you crazy if you thought about it too much. Turn this way and that happens. Turn that way and this happens.

There’s so much she can’t wait for.

a great many ills of adults might be cured by a nap or a good meal or a bit of timely reassurance.

HE REMEMBERS NOW WITH SOMETHING LIKE A FULL-BODY FLUSH, HE REMEMBERS WHAT IT MEANS TO SHARE SOMETHING WITH SOMEONE, THE PARTICULAR ALCHEMY THAT CAN LIGHT THINGS UP.

He hesitates, then turns and starts up her walk. Gives her a friendly smile, to boot. He wishes she wouldn’t wear a wig, or at least not one that sits so crookedly on her head. It’s a distraction. Sometimes he has to restrain himself from reaching over and giving it a little tug, then smacking her knee in a friendly way and saying, “There you go!” But why risk humiliating her?

But what we need are readers. Right? Where would writers be without readers? Who are they going to write for? And actors, what are they without an audience? Actors, painters, dancers, comedians, even just ordinary people doing ordinary things, what are they without an audience of some sort? “See, that’s what I do. I am the audience. I am the witness. I am the great appreciator,

VON BERG: No, no, I never had any interest in that direction. Slight pause. Of course, there is this resentment toward the nobility. That might explain it. LEDUC: In the Nazis? Resentment? VON BERG, surprised: Yes, certainly.

Deep inside is a voice wanting to taunt her, to tell her she is undeserving of it, to not trust it because it won’t last, good things never last. Or it tells her she will fuck up and lose everything. But she’s gotten better at tuning that voice out.

He supposes a great many ills of adults might be cured by a nap or a good meal or a bit of timely reassurance. But adults complicate everything. They are by nature complicators. They learned to make things harder than they need to be and they learned to talk way too much.

He says, "Nola once told me she wished people could be stars in the sky and look down on those that they loved. I always wished that could be so. Let's you and I pretend it's true, even if it isn't, would that be okay with you?" Madly nods, her throat tight. "And after I die, why, you look up in the sky for two stars, real close together. That will be Nola and me. Those stars will be so close together, it'll look like they are one, but they'll be two. Me, and then just to my right, Nola. Look up at us sometimes." "I will," Maddy says, "I promise. But you're not going anywhere yet.

BAYARD—looks at Von Berg for a moment, then addresses all: I don’t understand it, but take my advice. If anything like that happens and you find yourself on that train . . . there are four bolts halfway up the doors on the inside. Try to pick up a nail or a screwdriver, even a sharp stone—you can chisel the wood out around those bolts and the doors will open. I warn you, don’t believe anything they tell you—I heard they’re working Jews to death in the Polish camps. MONCEAU: I happen to have a cousin; they sent him to Auschwitz; that’s in Poland, you know. I have several letters from him saying he’s fine. They’ve even taught him bricklaying. BAYARD: Look, friend, I’m telling you what I heard from people who know. Hesitates. People who make it their business to know, you understand? Don’t listen to any stories about resettlement, or that they’re going to teach you a trade or something. If you’re on that train get out before it gets where it’s going.

BAYARD: How can you say that? Hitler is the creation of the capitalist class. VON BERG, in terrible mourning and anxiety: But they adore him! My own cook, my gardeners, the people who work in my forests, the chauffeur, the gamekeeper—they are Nazis! I saw it coming over them, the love for this creature—my housekeeper dreams of him in her bed, she’d serve my breakfast like a god had slept with her; in a dream slicing my toast! I saw this adoration in my own house! That, that is the dreadful fact. Controlling himself: I beg your pardon, but it disturbs me. I admire your faith; all faith to some degree is beautiful. And when I know that yours is based on something so untrue—it’s terribly disturbing. Quietly: In any case, I cannot glory in the facts; there is no reassurance there. They adore him, the salt of the earth. . . . Staring: Adore him.

She walks away, and Arthur stares at the headstone. “Isn’t that something?” he asks Nola. “We have a family.

We can’t help but make mistakes. The important thing is to keep trying. And to apologize when you need to.

Arthur thinks that, above all, aging means the abandonment of criticism and the taking on of compassionate acceptance

presence

yearning and grief for lost places.

He taught her one of her favorite words: hiraeth, a Welsh word that means a homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or that maybe never was; it means nostalgia and yearning and grief for lost places.

Right. What are they going to do, sue you for misrepresentation?

Eighteen. The word is a poem.

I'll love you forever in darkness and sun, I’ll love you past when my whole sweet life is done,” he says. Something he once wrote to her in a birthday card when they were still in their twenties. Oh, my. In their twenties. And there it is, slow to come today, but there it is, the feeling of her inside him. She blooms in his heard, and he is suddenly warm.

You know when I was a little kid, I used to try to imagine heaven, and it just seemed boring to me. The idea of living forever, it seemed boring. I preferred the way things happened here. Beginnings and endings. Starts and finishes. Risks. Uncertainties. I even liked the mysteries, the ever-unknowns. I mean, we don't know where we come from, really; and when we die, we don't know where we go." "Heaven," Lucille insists. Frank continues..."Well, that's what a lot of people say. But we don't know. My way of looking at it is, who cares what happens before we are born and after we die? The question that has become increasingly important to me is, what do we do in the meantime?

But what we need are readers. Right? Where would writers be without readers? Who are they going to write for? And actors, what are they without an audience? Actors, painters, dancers, comedians, even just ordinary people doing ordinary things, what are they without an audience of some sort? See, that's what I do. I am the audience. I am the witness. I am the great appreciator, that's what I do and that's all I want to do. I worked for a lot of years. I did a lot of things for a lot of years. Now, well, here I am. I don't feel useless. I feel lucky.

Arthur feels an impulse to tell her he’d love to have her company anytime. He feels like she’s the smallest little plant, dying from lack of water. But then he realizes he must tread carefully in this regard. People who don’t feel cared for are not always comfortable being cared for.

Now it is a war of days: on

He’s Nola’s blossoms, and he’s ready.

are pinched tightly together, she attempts a smile. Arthur can’t help it; he thinks she looks constipated.

bound to, and the ties to such families live in our hearts.

Martha Stewart these days. She supposes it could be a gay man, that might be a nice change.

He looks like a man who is stricken, trying not to look stricken. He

luminous in their joy. There are photos of

love you forever in darkness and sun, I’ll love you past when my whole sweet life is done,” he says. Something he

When the sun came up fully, the ice field began to glow in mauves and corals, a breathtaking sight. There was one iceberg with a double peak about two hundred feet high. To Lucy Duff Gordon the illuminated bergs looked like giant opals, and May Futrelle noted how they glistened like rock quartz, though one of them, she thought, was doubtless the murderer. The scene reminded Hugh Woolner of photographs of an Antarctic expedition. Seven-year-old Douglas Spedden raised a few smiles in Boat 3 by exclaiming to his nurse, “Oh Muddie, look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa Claus on it!” Daisy Spedden recorded in her diary that as their boat was rowed toward rescue, “the tragedy of the situation sank deep into our hearts as we saw the Carpathia standing amidst the few bits of wreckage with the pitifully small number of lifeboats coming up to her from different directions.” After racing through the night to the Titanic’s distress position, the Carpathia had spotted Fourth Officer Boxhall’s green flares and had headed for them. “Shut down your engines and take us aboard,” Boxhall shouted up as the Carpathia drew alongside Boat 2 at 4:10 a.m. “I have only one sailor,” he added, as the boat tossed on the choppy swells. “All right,” came back the voice of the Carpathia’s captain, Arthur Rostron.

taking conversation where he finds it, but the crow flies away.

She tries to be a good Christian. Jesus went around forgiving everyone, though her personal belief is that he went a little too far with that business.

Your girlfriend won't stay pretty for long. I myself was a hot tomato, but look at me now. 'Pretty' goes away, but what can come in its place is 'beautiful.' And that's better. Do you know what I mean, Arthur? Because when you look with the eyes of love, what you see is beautiful. Even an ugly dog---you know what I mean. You've probably seen Mr. Blesoff and his terrible little dog that I don't even know what it is. But Mr. Blesoff acts like he's Lassie. What matters is not what girls look like, even though I know, I know: you're young, you like the pretty girls, you got the engine running. But what matters is who they are. In their soul. What you want, Arthur, is someone you see eye-to-eye with. Someone you can laugh with. But most important, you want someone you can cry with.

Arthur realizes that if he were alone, it would be a grim wait...with the girl, it's an adventure. That's what being with another does. He remembers now, with something like a full body flush. He remembers what it means to share something with someone. The particular alchemy that can light things up.

You know, Arthur,” his mother said, “in time, you will find that little bits of happiness will make their way inside you and stay there. One little thing, and then one thing more. And then you’ll realize that you’re okay. You’ll be okay, son, I promise you. You’ll never forget him and you’ll never stop missing him. But you’ll be okay. And for you to be okay doesn’t take a single thing away from Frank.

A promise is a promise, even if it's only one you made to yourself.

Die and you'll be popular.

A man doesn’t always make room in his life for appreciating certain things that seem to be under women’s auspices, but there’s a satisfaction in some of them. The toilet seat, though. Up. And there are other grim pleasures in doing things he didn’t used to get to do. Cigar right at the kitchen table. Slim Jims for dinner.

When his elderly neighbor says they’re both useless because they don’t DO anything, Arthur Trulov notes that everybody wants to be a writer. “But what we need are readers. Right? Where would writers be without readers? Who are they going to write for? And actors, what are they without an audience? Actors, painters, dancers, comedians, even just ordinary people doing ordinary things, what are they without an audience of some sort? “See, that’s what I do. I am the audience. I am the witness. I am the great appreciator, that’s what I do and that’s all I want to do. I worked for a lot of years. I did a lot of things for a lot of years. Now, well, here I am in the rocking chair, and I don’t mind it, Lucille. I don’t feel useless. I feel lucky.” (128)

YOU HAD TO SEIZE THE MOMENT, ACT ON A GOOD IMPULSE BEFORE EVERYTHING JUST DISAPPEARED.

MADDY FEELS HER MOTHER SOMETIMES AS A GLOW IN HER BRAIN, AS A KNOCK AT HER HEART, AS A WHISPER SHE CAN'T QUITE HEAR.

When Arthur gets home, he pulls the mail from the box, brings it into the kitchen to sort through it, then tosses it all in the trash: junk mail. A waste of the vision he has left, going through it.

My way of looking at it is, who cares what happens before we’re born and after we die? The question that has become increasingly important to me is, what do we do in the meantime?

Thought it was funny to answer his phone by saying, “You DID?

Arthur thinks that, above all, aging means the abandonment of criticism and the taking on of compassionate acceptance. He sees that as a good trade.

He doesn’t like that he thought that about her, but what can you do? Everybody has thoughts that shame them. You can’t control them coming in. But you don’t have to let them all out. That’s the crux of it. That’s what made for civilization, what was left of it, anyway.

It is in people, to be entertained by cruelty.

Arthur feels an impulse to tell her he'd love to have her company anytime. He feels like she's the smallest little plant, dying from lack of water. But then he realizes he must tread carefully in this regard. People who don't feel cared for are not always comfortable being cared for.

She’ll suggest it. She’ll go slowly, make a little, subtle suggestion, and let him think he thought of it. That was men. You had to make them think they thought of things and then they were more likely to do them.

But the longer I live, the more I come to see that love is not so easy for everyone. It can get awfully complicated. It can make us do good things but it can also make us do bad things.

they did so many times, so many times—as young people, as middle-aged people, as old people.