Quotes from Elizabeth Strout

David in really concrete ways. He slipped and slid in my mind, like he would not hold still. I could not understand it.

William, who had really said remarkably little since the baby had been born, said to me that night, "You know, Lucy, I think I would feel better if she had been a boy." It was as though something dropped deep inside of me, and I did not say anything about it. But I have always remembered that.

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.

God, I love young people," Harmon said. "They get griped about enough. People like to think the younger generation's job is to steer the world to hell. But it's never true, is it? They're hopeful and good—and that's how it should be.

He seemed younger to me. I felt older every day.

Nothing is long ago.

But it was very strange to think that the children I had were already—in just one generation—so different, so very different, from me and what I had come from. And from what Catherine had come from as well. I don't know why this came to me with such force at that moment, but it did.

should never be taken lightly, the essential loneliness of people, that the choices they made to keep themselves from that gaping darkness were choices that required respect:

Bob first greeted them at graduation, appeared

God, I love young people," Harmon said. "They get griped about enough. People like to think the young generation's job is to steer the world to hell. But it's never true, is it? They're hopeful and good - and that's how it should be.

And then I remembered that one time, when I was pregnant with Chrissy, I had looked down at my big stomach and put my hand over it and thought: Whoever you are, you do not belong to me. My job is to help you get into the world, but you do not belong to me. And remembering this now, I thought: Lucy, you were absolutely right.

but there was some—well, "eagerness" was too strong a word—but some desire to bathe and dress and leave the house, as though another place waited where she belonged.

Bob was not a young man, and he knew about loss. 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 release.

You learn to, when you don't feel safe. You can always take a catnap sitting up.

don't know if I believe it or not." I paused. "I don't really know anything." I added, "Except how much I love you and Becka. I know that.

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.

In this city of New York, I see children crying from tiredness, which is real, and sometimes from just crabbiness, which is real. 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... I have left the subway car I was riding in so i did not have to hear a child crying that way.

We all live with people—and places—and things—that we have given great weight to. But we are weightless, in the end. A few weeks later I found out that William did not like watching me floss my teeth.

Bewildering that you could harm a child without even knowing, thinking all the while you were being careful, conscientious. But it was a terrible feeling. More terrible than having

We all live with people—and places—and things—that we have given great weight to. But we are weightless, in the end.

As has often been the case with me, I began to dread this in advance... But early on I saw this: 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.

She almost had no preference for any kind of book, and she had sometimes thought that odd; she had read Shakespeare and the thrillers of Sharon McDonald, and biographies of Samuel Johnson and different playwrights, silly romance novels, and also—the poets. She thought, privately, that poets just about sat on the right hand of God.

Cindy looked up at this woman before her; she saw in her eyes a distinct light. "I can call you Olive. Hello, Olive." Cindy looked around and said, "Here, pull up that chair.

am in mourning for my life." It took me a moment. We were