Quotes from Elizabeth Strout

Somehow, Suzanne had remained uncorrupted; her guilelessness in talking to him was a gift of no small proportion.

Americans really did not understand desperation.

other. And because she had, ever since then, been weeping from a private faucet inside her, unable to keep

What a really awful thing I had done. I had not thought of this until now. To deny my husband any chance of comforting me—oh, it was an unspeakably awful thing. And I had not known. This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.

A crazy parent, America was. Good and openhearted one way, dismissive and cruel in others.

Whenever I don't know what to do, I watch what I am doing.

Isabelle, at different places and moments in the years to come, would sometimes be surrounded by silence and find in herself only the repeated word "Amy." "Amy, Amy"—for this was it, her heart's call, her prayer. "Amy," she would think, "Amy," remembering this day's chilly, golden air.

he had thought more and more how provincial New Yorkers were, and how they didn't know it.

the way people can love those they barely know, and how abiding that love can be, and also how deep that love can be, even when—as in her own case—it was temporary. She

It was the air, really—the clear brightness of the air that in the evenings now held the first chilliness of autumn, and brought with it that subtle undercurrent of old longings and new chances which autumn often brings.

Living did not mean one joy piled upon another. It was merely the hope for less pain, hope played like a playing card upon another hope, a wish for kindnesses and mercies to emerge like kings and queens in an unexpected twist in the game. One could hold the cards oneself or not: they would land the same way, regardless. Tenderness did not enter into it, except in a damaged way.

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.

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.

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

It did not matter at this point; my life had unfolded as it had.

My whole childhood was a lockdown. I never saw anyone or went anywhere.

Rimase seduta al tavolo di cucina, con la schiena curva e la mano posata sul grosso stomaco. Il pensiero che in qualunque momento ne avesse sentito il bisogno avrebbe potuto uccidersi le attraversò la mente. Non era la prima volta in vita sua che ci pensava, ma in precedenza rifletteva sempre sul biglietto da lasciare.

But I was so sad that evening: I understood—as I have understood at different points in my life—that the childhood isolation of fear and loneliness would never leave me. My childhood had been a lockdown.

Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful?

I could not believe that I was sitting in the sky

When a wife is so happy to see her husband, she would like to think he was happy to see her too.

Angie se dio cuenta de que había comprendido algo demasiado tarde y que la vida debía de ser eso, comprender algo cuando ya era demasiado tarde.

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 <...> —their inner selves brushing up against the other.

she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered.