C. Elizabeth Quotes

I don't think you can say that feminism has made women critical of marriage because women have been critical of marriage for centuries.

You almost can't wait too long [to get married]. The longer you wait, the better off you are going to be. And the happier your kids are going to be, and the happier a mom you are going to be.

Reality has taught us that no woman can build an honest life without sacrificing something along the way. Deciding what will be sacrificed is not easy.

You have to work ceaselessly on your end to digest and imbibe your opportunities or, I have come to believe, they will gradually slip away and knock on someone else's more receptive door.

It is completely acceptable to be tired because it means you're working hard. But it's not acceptable to be stressed because that means things are going wrong or your head is broken.

All the parts of us that we ever were are always going to be with us. You make space to carry them and you just try not to let them drive. But you can't chuck them out either.

You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.

The reality, certainly in my life, is that we all have love stories that go terribly wrong; we all have horribly broken hearts. And somehow we endure. We're not destroyed by it.

I've ruined my eyes, I've ruined my health from my studiousness!

I think my weakness as a writer is a limited imagination, and I think my strength is a talent for reflecting the world, or sort of curating things out of the world and putting them into books.

Marriage is a strange combination of dream and reality, and we spend our lives as couples trying to negotiate that divide.

Creativity asks you to enter realms with uncertain outcomes. People want to create a safe life for themselves so they try to live without fear and they end up killing their creativity in the process.

Maturity brings - among other things - the ability to sustain and survive enormous contradictions and disappointments.

Marriage is - among other things - a study in contradiction and disappointment, and inside that reality there is space for us to truly learn how to love.

Marriage is not a game for the young.

That's what we're all sort of trying to do in our lives - to make the simplest things work out the best.

I've read that under trauma, that you have this ability to kind of disconnect from the experience.

I spent a week living as a man. Which was actually, I'm sorry to say, embarrassingly easy for me to do.

I think that if you can roast a chicken, you can get whatever you want out of a woman.

There is always something particularly delightful about exceptions to a rule.

"Most of us tend to belittle all suffering except our own," said Mary. "I think it's fear. We don't want to come too near in case we're sucked in and have to share it".

To be sorry and glad together is to be perceptive to the richness of life.

The perfect moment, once lost, is not easily found again.

All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law, as of all benign laws, is fear.

What is the distinguishing mark of an aristocrat?' she asked him suddenly.'Reverence,' he replied.

Sensible fathers and mothers, when their children marry, go back to the old days and renew their youth.

Being ill makes you feel what well people call sentimental, but what you feel is nonetheless genuine whatever they call it.

cowardice more than any other failing demands a ruthless paying of the price from those who give it hospitality.

One was born a certain sort of person, and though by ceasless struggle one might become as nice as that sort of person ever is, one could never become as nice as a nicer sort of person.

Cleanliness', chuckled Sir Benjamin, noting his great niece's delighted smile as her eyes rested upon him, 'comes next to godliness, eh, Maria?

Marriage is a very long process.

All we are asked to bear we can bear.

I doubt if we nuns are really as self-sacrificing as we must seem to be to you who live in the world. We don't give everything for nothing, you know. The mystery plays fair.

The elements were "seeking" each other in rage and confusion, and in the fury of the conflict boastful man was utterly humiliated, sucked down, drowned.

If you lose your reason, you lose it into the hands of God....It's the only place where anything is safe. And when you're dead it's only what's there you'll have. Nothing else.

The irruption of the supernatural into our world is a much more enticing notion to explore than the same thing happening in some past time, or in a wholly imaginary world.

Making a living is nothing; the great difficulty is making a point, making a difference-with words.

Sentences in which I have tried for a certain light tone -- many of those have to do with events, upheavals, destructions that caused me to weep like a child.

Canadians, do not vomit on me!

Houses of evil similarity appeared like rows of disciplined, humiliated orphans.

Writing is not "the establishment of a professional reputation" as if one were a doctor or lawyer; it is not properly in the sentence with creation of a family and the purchase of a home.

I don't know when the word fashion came into being, but it was an evil day. For thousands of years people got along with something called style and maybe, in another thousand, we'll go back to it.

One of the most fascinating things about the world of fashion is that practically no one knows who inhabits it or why it exists. There are a few people who know how it works, but they won't tell.

rule number one for all American women: You are to be seen and felt, but not heard. Listen and do as you are told and everything will be all right.

After marriage, all things change. And one of them better be you.

Style doesn't change every month or every year. It only changes as often as there is a real change in the point of view and lives of the people for whom it is produced.

If you feel like getting a divorce, you are no exception to the general rule.

The French legend is a very simple one. All really beautiful clothes are designed in the houses of the French couturiers and all women want those clothes.

Yesterday people were permitted to change things. They will be permitted to advocate changing them tomorrow. It is only dangerous to think of changing anything today.

If one is willing to have children, rhythm is probably the best method of contraception.