Elizabeth Strout Quotes & Sayings

And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats
then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water
seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed. — Elizabeth Strout

... we never know, and never would know, what it would be like to understand another person fully. It seems a simple thought, but as I get older I see more and more that she had to tell us that. — Elizabeth Strout

What I mean is, this is not just a woman's story. It's what happens to a lot of us, if we are lucky enough to hear that detail and pay attention — Elizabeth Strout

For Angie time was as big and round as the sky, and to try to make sense out of it was like trying to make sense of music and God and why the ocean was deep. — Elizabeth Strout

Hope was a cancer inside him. He didn't want it; he did not want it. He could not bear these shoots of tender green hope springing up within him any longer. (45) — Elizabeth Strout

I like these experts because they seem decent, and because I feel I know a true sentence when I hear one now. They do not know what my mother remembered.

I don't know what my mother remembered either. — Elizabeth Strout

In the kind of New England I'm from, you are expected to stay and marry somebody from New England - well, Maine, actually - so I think it was seen as a betrayal when I left for New York, which has been my refuge. — Elizabeth Strout

I'm so interested in the fact that we really don't know anybody. We think we know the people close to us, but we don't, we really don't. — Elizabeth Strout

The evenings grew longer; kitchen windows stayed open after dinner and peepers could be heard in the marsh. Isabelle, stepping out to sweep her porch steps, felt absolutely certain that some wonderful change was arriving in her life. The strength of this belief was puzzling; what she was feeling, she decided, was really the presence of God. — Elizabeth Strout

It was a newsmagazine she was reading, something she hadn't done for quite a while - she turned one page quickly, because she couldn't stand to look at the president's face: His close-set eyes, the jut of his chin, the sight offended her viscerally. She had lived through a lot of things with this country, but she had never lived through the mess they were in now. Here was a man who looked retarded, Olive thought, remembering the remark made by the woman in Moody's store. You could see it in his stupid little eyes. And the country had voted him in! A born-again Christian with a cocaine addiction. So they deserved to go to hell, and would. — Elizabeth Strout

The privacy of sorrow. — Elizabeth Strout

The key to contentment was to never ask why; she had learned that long ago. — Elizabeth Strout

Bullies are just frightened people. — Elizabeth Strout

Work gets done if you simply do it. — Elizabeth Strout

You are wasting time by suffering twice. I mention this only to show how many things the mind cannot will itself to do, even if it wants to. — Elizabeth Strout

No one in this world comes from nothing. — Elizabeth Strout

At the end of the day, he said, "I will take care of you," his voice thick with emotion. She stood before him and nodded. He zipped her coat for her. — Elizabeth Strout

A yearning stirred in him that was not sexual but a kind of reaching toward her simplicity of form. He — Elizabeth Strout

And if such a gift could come to him at such a time, then anything - dear girl from Rockford dressed up for her meeting, rushing above the Rock River - he opened his eyes, and yes, there it was, the perfect knowledge: Anything was possible for anyone. — Elizabeth Strout

But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different. — Elizabeth Strout

But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone. — Elizabeth Strout

But the mind, or the heart, she didn't know which one it was, but it was slower these days, not catching up, and she felt like a big, fat field mouse scrambling to get up on a ball that was right in front of her turning faster and faster, and she couldn't get her scratchy frantic limbs up onto it. — Elizabeth Strout

I've always been tremendously interested in criminal law. It goes to a deep interest I have in prisons and the criminal element, and what we do as a society with it. I've always been touched by the idea of criminality. — Elizabeth Strout

But in Jim O'Casey there had been a wariness, a quiet anger, and she had seen herself in him, had said to him once, We're both cut from the same piece of bad cloth. He had just watched her, eating his apple. — Elizabeth Strout

Jim. If you have any other outside events, don't confess them. That's my advice, okay?""What am I going to do, Bob? I have no family.""You have family," Bob said. "You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane. And a nephew who used to be kind of a drip but apparently is not so much of a drip now. That's called family."Jim fell asleep, his head leaning forward almost to his chest — Elizabeth Strout

It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet. — Elizabeth Strout

A person gets tired. The mind or the soul or whatever word we have for whatever is not just the body gets tired, and this, I have decided, is - usually, mostly - nature helping us. I was getting tired. I think - but I don't know - that he was getting tired too. — Elizabeth Strout

Her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do. A — Elizabeth Strout

She said that her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tel us who we are and what we think and what we do. — Elizabeth Strout

It's just that I'm the kind of person,' Rebecca continued, 'that thinks if you took a map of the whole world and put a pin in it for every person, there wouldn't be a pin for me. — Elizabeth Strout

Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me. — Elizabeth Strout

I'm so deeply interested in what it feels like to be other people that I get to operate under the illusion when I'm writing fiction that I'm not really revealing that much about myself. But, of course, I am, and I know that I am. And yet there's this sort of membrane that I get to work behind as I write my fiction, and I love it. — Elizabeth Strout

He would not let her go. Even though, staring into her open eyes in the swirling salt-filled water, with sun flashing though each wave, he thought he would like this moment to be forever: the dark-haired woman on shore calling for their safety, the girl who had once jumped rope like a queen, now holding him with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean - oh, insane, ludicrous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look how she wanted to hold on. — Elizabeth Strout

If you find yourself protecting anyone as you write this piece, remember this: You're not doing it right. — Elizabeth Strout

Speaking of this, he felt something had been returned to him, as though the inestimable losses of life had been lifted like a boulder, and beneath he saw - under the attentive gaze of Daisy's blue eyes - the comforts and sweetness of what had once been. — Elizabeth Strout

Say the word, even now I can barely stand to — Elizabeth Strout

In a way, I'm very interested in writing about Maine, because I think Maine represents its own kind of history. It's the oldest state, and it's the whitest state. — Elizabeth Strout

I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way, and you know you're not quite there, and you're redoing it and redoing it, and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard. It's a job of tremendous anxiety for me. — Elizabeth Strout

But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can't even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine. — Elizabeth Strout

This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly. — Elizabeth Strout

I thought how when I got out of the hospital I would never again walk down the sidewalk without giving thanks for being one of those people, — Elizabeth Strout

He knew the quiet that arrived, the blinding force of panic, and he knew too that each loss brought with it some odd, barely acknowledged sense of relief. — Elizabeth Strout

People always kept moving, her mother had said, it's the American way. Moving west, moving south, marrying up, marrying down, getting divorced - but moving... — Elizabeth Strout

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right." I — Elizabeth Strout

It's funny how one thing can make you realize something like that. One can be ready to give up the children one always wanted, one can be ready to withstand remarks about one's past, or one's clothes, but then - a tiny remark and the soul deflates and says: Oh. I — Elizabeth Strout

The purpose of fiction is not to make people seem nice. What makes anyone think people are nice? Look around you! — Elizabeth Strout

There is that constant judgment in this world: How are we going to make sure we do not feel inferior to another? — Elizabeth Strout

one of those things about getting older was knowing that so many moments weren't just moments, they were gifts. — Elizabeth Strout

They had joked about that - how the girl had no idea, as the plunked down their mugs of coffee, that her own arm would someday be sprinkled with age spots, or that cups of coffee had to be planned since blood pressure medicine made you widdle so much, that life picked up speed, and then most of it was gone - made you breathless, really. — Elizabeth Strout

she'd have been throwing out clamshells, most likely. — Elizabeth Strout

You surely know that in the course of a long marriage it is not unusual for a husband or a wife to develop a crush on someone else. — Elizabeth Strout

It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you're not quite there and you're redoing it and redoing it and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard. — Elizabeth Strout

we are free of each other, and yet not, and never will be. — Elizabeth Strout

And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is. — Elizabeth Strout

Then I understood I would never marry him. It's funny how one thing can make you realize something like that. One can be ready to give up the children one always wanted, one can be ready to withstand remarks about one's past, or one's clothes, but then
a tiny remark and the soul deflates and says: Oh. — Elizabeth Strout

You will have only one story," she had said. "You'll write your one story many ways. Don't ever worry about story. You have only one. — Elizabeth Strout

there was nothing to explain what he felt was happening to him, that he'd been put into a transparent plastic capsule that rose off the ground and was tossed and blown and shaken so fiercely that he could not possibly find his way back to the quotidian pleasures of his past life. Desperately, he did not want this. — Elizabeth Strout

He thought of all the people in the world who felt they'd been saved by a city. He was one of them. — Elizabeth Strout

I wrote the story, but you will bring to it your own experience of life, and some other reader will do the same, and it will become a different story with each reader. I believe that even the time in your life when you read the book will determine how you receive it. Our lives are changing constantly, and therefore not even our own story is always what we think it is. — Elizabeth Strout

Again the water rose, they both took a breath; again they were submerged and his leg hooked over something, an old pipe, unmoving. The next time, they both reached their heads high as the water rushed back, another breath taken. He heard Mrs. Kitteridge yelling from above. He couldn't hear the words, but he understood that help was coming. He had only to keep Patty from falling away, and as they went again beneath the swirling, sucking water, he strengthened his grip on her arm to let her known: He would not let her go. Even though, staring into her open eyes in the swirling salt-filled water, with sun flashing through each wave, he thought he would like this moment to be forever: the dark-haired woman on shore calling for their safety, the girl who had once jumped rope like a queen, now holding him with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean - oh, insane, ludicrous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look she wanted to hold on. — Elizabeth Strout

Now, how does that feel, I've always wondered. To be known as a Pretty Nicely Girl? — Elizabeth Strout

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic
you were made to feel guilty about everything — Elizabeth Strout

Mom, when you write a novel you get to rewrite it, but when you live with someone for twenty years, that is the novel, and you can never write that novel with anyone again! How — Elizabeth Strout

What young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn't choose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered. — Elizabeth Strout

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write. — Elizabeth Strout

I don't think there's anybody I write about who I don't care for deeply in some way, no matter what their behavior is. — Elizabeth Strout

His blue eyes were watching her now; she saw in them the vulnerability, the invitation, the fear, as she sat down quietly, placed her open hand on his chest, felt the thump, thump of his heart, which would someday stop, as all hearts do. But there was no someday now. — Elizabeth Strout

They had never kissed, nor even touched, only passed by each other closely as they went into his office, a tiny cubicle off the library - they avoided the teachers' room. But after he said that that day, she lived with a kind of terror, and a longing that felt at times unendurable. But people endure things. — Elizabeth Strout

I see." I didn't see, though. How do we ever see something about our own self? — Elizabeth Strout

The next morning he and Denise worked in an intimate silence. If she was up at the cash register and he was behind his counter, he could still feel the invisible presence of her against him, as though she had become Slippers, or he had - their inner selves brushing up against the other. — Elizabeth Strout

Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as "big bursts" and "little bursts." Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee's, let's say, or the waitress at Dunkin' Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really. — Elizabeth Strout

I don't know if I have a memory of not thinking I was a writer - it goes that far back. I went to law school because I didn't know how to earn a living otherwise. I tried to ignore the pull, but it wouldn't let me. — Elizabeth Strout

There were days - she could remember this - when Henry would hold her hand as they walked home, middle-aged people, in their prime. Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it. But she had that memory now, of something healthy and pure. — Elizabeth Strout

Pam replied that she was too old to worry about being cool, but in fact she did worry about it, and that's one reason it was always nice to see Bobby, who was so uncool as to inhabit - in Pam's mind - his own private condominium of coolness. — Elizabeth Strout

I said on the phone to my mother, "I think I'm going to write the story of the Burgess kids." "It's a good one," she agreed. "People will say it's not nice to write about people I know." My mother was tired that night. She yawned. "Well, you don't know them," she said. "Nobody ever knows anyone. — Elizabeth Strout

Inside the music like this, she understood many things. She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at this age, to tell her he had pitied her for years. She understood that as he drove his car back down the coast toward Boston, toward his wife with whom he had raised three children, that something in him would be satisfied to have witnessed her the way he had tonight, and she understood that this form of comfort was true for many people, as it made Malcolm feel better to call Walter Dalton a pathetic fairy, but it was thin milk, this form of nourishment; it could not change that you had wanted to be a concert pianist and ended up a real estate lawyer, that you had married a woman and stayed married to her for thirty years, when she did not ever find you lovely in bed. — Elizabeth Strout

I was a pretty terrible lawyer. A really, really terrible lawyer. — Elizabeth Strout

God, I'm scared,' he said, quietly. She almost said, 'Oh, stop. I hate scared people. — Elizabeth Strout

It was always sad, the way the world was going. And always a new age dawning. — Elizabeth Strout

Oh that's lovely," said Bunny. "Olive, you've got a date."
"Why would you say something so foolish?" Olive asked, really annoyed. "We're two lonely people having supper."
"Exactly," said Bunny. "That's a date. — Elizabeth Strout

Behind the bored eyes of the waitresses handing out sundaes there loomed, she knew, great earnestness, great desires, and great disappointments; such confusion lay ahead for them, and (more wearisome) anger; oh, before they were through, they would blame and blame and blame, and then get tired, too. — Elizabeth Strout

She felt she had figured something out too late, and that must be the way of life, to get something figured out when it was too late. — Elizabeth Strout

A Republican, then?" Jack asked, after a moment. "Oh, for God's sake." Olive stopped walking, looked at him through her sunglasses. "I didn't say moron. You mean because we have a cowboy for a president? Or before that an actor who played a cowboy? Let me tell you, that idiot ex-cocaine-addict was never a cowboy. He can wear all the cowboy hats he wants. He's a spoiled brat to the manor born. And he makes me puke. — Elizabeth Strout

I kept thinking how the five of us had had a really unhealthy family, but I saw then too how our roots were twisted so tenaciously around one another's hearts. — Elizabeth Strout

Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became. (211) — Elizabeth Strout

But every town had been promising. Every place at first had said, Here you go- You can live here. You can rest here. You can fit. The enormous skies of the Southwest, the shadows that fell over the desert mountains, the innumerable cacti- red-tipped, or yellow-blossomed, or flat-headed- all this had lightened him when he first moved...
...But as with them all, the same hopeful differences--...-- they all became places that sooner or later, one way or another, assured him that he didn't, in fact, fit. — Elizabeth Strout

That day of the parade in the Village, I think--but I'm not sure--that William and I had a fight. Because I remember him saying, "Button, you just don't get it, do you?" He meant I did not understand that I could be loved, was lovable. Very often he said that when we had a fight. He was the only man to call me "Button." But he was not the last to say the other: You just don't get it, do you? — Elizabeth Strout

Oh, I wish I organized my books. But I don't. I'm not an organized person. The best I can do is put the books I really like in one sort of general area, and poetry in another. — Elizabeth Strout

But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable. — Elizabeth Strout

But once in a while I see a child crying with the deepest of desperation, and I think it is one of the truest sounds a child can make. — Elizabeth Strout

stopped coming home for lunch. He just stayed in his office — Elizabeth Strout

So much of life seems speculation. — Elizabeth Strout

It was Henry's nature to listen, and many times during the week he would say, 'Gosh, I'm awful sorry to hear that, ' or 'Say, isn't that something? — Elizabeth Strout

Jim, because he was angry even back then and trying to control it, she felt, and Bob because his heart was big. She didn't care much for Susan. "Nobody did, far as I know," she said. — Elizabeth Strout

There are times now, and my life has changed so completely, that I think back on the early years and I find myself thinking: It was not that bad. Perhaps it was not. But there are times, too - unexpected - when walking down a sunny sidewalk, or watching the top of a tree bend in the wind, or seeing a November sky close down over the East River, I am suddenly filled with the knowledge of darkness so deep that a sound might escape from my mouth, and I will step into the nearest clothing store and talk with a stranger about the shape of sweaters newly arrived. This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can't possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don't know how others are. So much of life seems speculation. — Elizabeth Strout

society's been drugging its women for years — Elizabeth Strout

I don't think of myself as a fast reader. I just read a lot. When someone else might think, 'I might do the dishes,' I don't. But then the dishes multiply. — Elizabeth Strout

Because two people can't have entirely different opinions without one of them being final. — Elizabeth Strout

I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend. — Elizabeth Strout

All these lives," she said. "All the stories we never know." (125) — Elizabeth Strout