Quotes from Elizabeth Strout

have sometimes been sad that Tennessee Williams wrote that line for Blanche DuBois, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Many of us have been saved many times by the kindness of strangers, but after a while it sounds trite, like a bumper sticker. And that's what makes me sad, that a beautiful and true line comes to be used so often that it takes on the superficial sound of a bumper sticker.

I could not stop feeling panic, as if the Barton family, the five of us--off-kilter as we had been--was a structure over me I had not even known about until it ended...I saw how our roots were so tenaciously around one another's hearts. My husband said, "But you didn't even like them." And I felt especially frightened after that.

I have sometimes been sad that Tennessee Williams wrote that line for Blanche DuBois, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Many of us have been saved many times by the kindness of strangers, but after a while it sounds trite, like a bumper sticker. And that's what makes me sad, that a beautiful and true line comes to be used so often that it takes on the superficial sound of a bumper sticker.

So life goes on, I thought. (And now I think: It goes on, until it doesn't.)

Mommy, I cried inside myself, Mommy, I am so frightened! And the nice mother I have made up over the years answered: Yes, I know.

But when I think Oh William!, don't I mean Oh Lucy! too? Don't I mean Oh Everyone, Oh dear Everybody in this whole wide world, we do not know anybody, not even ourselves!

But it's a sad story, Lucy. Both Pam and Jim are in New York and they always will be, and I will always be here in Maine." We sat in silence while I absorbed this. Oh, he broke my heart!

But we do the best we can. Most of us are just trying to get through.

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.

It was the sudden memory of Jane Houlton in the waiting room that caused Olive to walk to the bed—the freedom of that ordinary banter, because Jack, in the doctor's office, had needed her, had given her a place in the world.

grief is a solitary matter.

It is a literary truism that there must be a period of distillation before the real impact of some tremendous event, either historical or personal, can emerge in writing.

I said, "But, William, someone had to know this was going to happen! I mean in the government, someone had to know and they looked away.

We are all in lockdown, all the time. We just don't know it, that's all.

But I know that money is a big thing, in a marriage, in a life, money is power, I do know that. No matter what I say, or what anyone says, money is power.

Maybe you fall in love with people who save your life, even when you think it's not worth saving.

Margaret Estaver," she added again. "Susan's at work." Margaret Estaver nodded as though she

She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life

I thought again about how my mother—my real one—had said this to me one day. And she was absolutely right. Everyone has to feel like they matter.

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

The World to Come

She'd filled the house with plants and flowers, been good to Ana, she'd packed suitcases for their expensive vacations, waited while he played golf, and mostly (Pam was right about this) listened while Jim talked about himself endlessly, how smart he'd been in court that day, how he was the best in the business and everyone knew it.… She had bought him a drawer full of cuff links, a ludicrously expensive watch, because, he said, he'd always wanted one. But

deprivations never leave us.

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.