In general, advertising isn't a "creative" atmosphere. It's a business atmosphere and your job is puzzle solving. My favorite aspect of the business, I guess, was presenting to clients. What I enjoyed least were the clients. Worried corporate brand managers, trying to dumb-down their ads for the stupid American population. I hated the disrespect that these people had for "consumers."

I was in advertising for years. That was cushy, you know? It's pretty cushy in a lot of ways, but I hated it.

So we can be filled with holes and loss and wide expanses of unhealed geography - and we can also be excited by life and in love and content at the exact same moment.

Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when.

There's never a false note in a Berg novel.

(The new boyfriend) knows I write every day for hours but has no idea that all I’m writing about is me. It seems wiser to let him think I’m an aspiring novelist instead of just an alcoholic with a year of sobriety who spends eight hours a day writing about the other 16.

I tend to really enjoy being swept up in fiction. I love a good story and I admire fiction authors.