Quotes from 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.

There was the sense of a war having occurred. One that was not yet over.

I care," Olive said. "I care because it says something about you. When you're attracted to crap, it says something about you.

Al ver Nueva York por la ventanilla, sentí lo que he sentido casi siempre cuando vuelvo a Nueva York en avión: asombro y gratitud a esta inmensa ciudad por haberme acogido, por haberme permitido vivir en ella.

Olive finally said, leaning forward in her chair, "Here's what I think, young lady. I think you're doin' excellent." Then she sat back. What a thing love was. Olive felt it for Betty, even with that bumper sticker on her truck.

Come se l'anima potesse far silenzio in quei momenti.

Bernie felt a physical response to this, as though a small wave had just rolled through his chest.

Don't be scared of your hunger. If you're scared of your hunger, you'll just be one more ninny like everyone else.

She called Christopher. "He's a Republican," she said. "Well, that's gross," Christopher answered.

And remorse, well, to be able to show remorse—to be able to be sorry about what we've done that's hurt other people—that keeps us human.

Because I love you, and we don't have much time.

pewter vase with one yellow

We are only doing what we can to get through.

I was so enthusiastic about the books I had read that I could see my students watching me and getting interested in these books too—just because I was so excited about these books that I had recently read.

Her eyes were closed, and throughout her tired self swept waves of gratitude—and regret. She pictured the sunny room, the sun-washed wall, the bayberry outside. It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.

cuando escribes una novela, puedes reescribirla, pero cuando vives con alguien veinte años, ésa es la novela, y no puedes volver a escribir esa novela con nadie.

What she felt, turning into the driveway, was a fury and pain so deep that she would never have believed a person could feel it and still remain alive.

This authority was why I had fallen in love with William. We crave authority. We do. No matter what anyone says, we crave that sense of authority.

I had only been on one airplane before, and that was when William flew me East my senior year in college. I could not believe that I was sitting in the sky, and I had to act nonchalant about it, and I tried to. But it was astonishing.

My mother told me in the hospital that day that I was not like my brother and sister: "Look at your life right now. You just went ahead and…did it." Perhaps she meant that I was already ruthless.

I would sometimes sit in our small bedroom and weep with a kind of horrendous inner pain, and William would come to me and say, "Lucy, talk to me, what is it?" And I would just shake my head until he went away. 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.

But an ache stayed inside her. And a faint reverberating hum of something close to joy lived on the outer edges of her memory, some kind of longing that had been answered once and was simply not answered anymore.

I wonder if we are all condemned forever to live outside the grace of God.

He felt her big presence, and imagined—fleetingly—that an elephant sat next to him, one that wanted to be a member of the human kingdom, and sweet in an innocent way, as though her stubs of forelegs were folded on her lap, her trunk moving just a little as she finished speaking.