The past doesn’t haunt us, we haunt the past.
Before I’m a writer, I’m definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.
I feel like they are two different things, and when I write books, they’re just books. If they can be movies that’s okay. But I would write a novel that couldn’t be a film.
I like, though, that people have a hunger to connect with other people. They’re desperate to know that you’re not lying to them or misleading them.
I’m like the guy who prepares your taxes or a dentist. I’m very conservative and boring in a lot of ways.
I never get sick of writing my own stories because there’s a certain comfort in knowing you will never run out of material. It’s relaxing, actually, to write.
Applause is a constant thing in AA. It’s how we buy drinks for each other.
When people meet me, many times they’re very surprised because they expect someone who is kind of wacky with seven piercings and very hip and cool and New York City, and I’m not.
There’s never a false note in a Berg novel.
Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.
The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.
I realized I could really become hooked on these happy pills. They gave me a glorious feeling of general well-being and didn’t make me fat, like alcohol. I wondered if there was any harm in being addicted to only these.
My subconscious does the writing; I don’t have control over that.
As a child, I was never drawn toward depraved or extreme situations; I really wanted a normal little childhood. Unfortunately, that’s just not what happened.
I can’t tell you how much I love Target and Costco, that kind of culture, because it’s something I never felt a part of. I’ve always felt like a tourist because I have never fit in anywhere.
I was in advertising for years. That was cushy, you know? It’s pretty cushy in a lot of ways, but I hated it.
I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in.
I never listen to music when I write.
I love to both give and receive very old books.
Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.