Joyce Elbert > Quotes

“Creative women, especially, have a shattering effect upon me. I envy them so. At the party yesterday, Mike introduced me to a very well-known actress whose work I have always admired. She was wearing a tortured beige dress and a pair of terrible earrings; yet when she spoke I heard a voice that said things I wanted to listen to, a smile that seemed unaware of its charm, but most of all an aliveness that sprang from I don't know where, and made me want to crawl into my Scaasi gown and not come out again until I had decided what I was going to be when I grew up.”
― Joyce Elbert, Drunk in Madrid

“I still remember typing the title page on my manual Smith-Corona with clammy hands and a racing heart. When I came to the words, "A novel by Joyce Elbert", I heard the New York Philharmonic break into Wagnerian praise for a major new literary voice, yet seconds later doubt and insecurity had crept in.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“Like many mind-altering drugs, alcohol had shown me where I wanted to go but alcohol couldn't get me there. It didn't have the power. I needed sobriety to connect me to stronger forces than my earthbound self. Whether these forces are God or nature is beside the point. Call them what you will. I feel that I instinctively knew I wasn't here alone or by sheer brute chance, but to live my life with as much courage and joy as possible before I returned to where I came from. I think that's really the goal.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“I had never been productive in beautiful, serene settings. I needed noise, activity, some kind of external energy to get me going.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“Even after a few years, the charm hadn't disappeared. I still enjoyed finding the first tulip of spring, seeing a buck race across my lawn, feeding cracked corn to birds, gathering kindling for the stove, walking on a blustery beach in December. I even enjoyed boarding up the windows in preparation for a hurricane or going out at night in a robe and pajamas to sweep falling snow off my car before it froze solid. I liked being exposed to the elements as I never was in New York. I think it's good to know the difference between what exists naturally and what is manmade. In cities we lose sight of these basic differences and, I believe, in the end, of ourselves.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“What saved us from becoming hard-nosed or callous was that we really liked each other, while remaining totally mystified by each other.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“After a rocky start, Getting Rid of Richard was picking up steam and when I hit page fifty I felt as though a milestone had been reached, while at the same time I felt increasingly anxious about the number of pages still to come. Then I realized that if I were to persevere, I had to stop dwelling on the road ahead and concentrate on the here and now. With that in mind, I resolved to write a minimum of three pages a day from then on and not think beyond those pages. If I did that faithfully six days a week, at the end of six months I would have a completed manuscript. Although it was hard to believe, I told myself that numbers don't lie.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“While it took much longer than I ever anticipated to see my writing efforts pay off, it finally happened so that at the age of forty-three I was my own woman, beholden to no one.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“Despite all of my moaning and groaning about the romantic disasters that continued to befall me, I knew if I were ever forced to choose I would take a good book over a good relationship any day of the week.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“The last time I saw Paris, my heart was definitely not young and gay. Bitter and disillusioned would be more like it.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“In the windowpane I caught a glimpse of myself: fat, badly-dressed, the seams on my skirt about to burst, my hair in need of a trim, my shoes run down at the heels, yet for once I didn't give a damn. I thought of how anxious I had been about this city, its intimidating chic, its hostile shopkeepers, Simone de Beauvoir's opinion of me, my clothes, my hairdo, my weight, my inability to speak the language properly. "Bonjour, Madame," I said to the proprietor in my fractured French. "Deux litres du lait, s'il vous plait."
Why do we always worry about the wrong things, I wondered?”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“Corny as it may sound today, I was used to thinking of men in terms of guidance and protection but suddenly no man felt I needed his guidance or protection since I had the aura of money to protect me.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs

“Actually "nerve" is one of the qualities it takes to tackle a first novel, the others being inflated ego and a gambler's sense of crazed bravado, all of which I felt imbued with, more or less, when I sat down to write my account of one woman's efforts to keep her ex-husband, a deranged fence jumper, out of her apartment and life.”
― Joyce Elbert, A Tale of Five Cities & Other Memoirs