Quotes from Elizabeth Strout

The writer chooses details in accord with the narrative voice most fit to tell the story, sensing how much is needed and what might need to be cut.

Because Christopher doesn't need to be living with a woman who thinks she knows everything. Nobody knows everything—they shouldn't think they do.

Tommy told Pete about what his brother had seen in the war, the women who had walked through the camps, how some had wept and others had looked furious and would not be made to feel bad. "And so there's a struggle, or a contest, I guess you could say, all the time, it seems to me. 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.

people may not understand that my mother could never say the words I love you. I feel that people may not understand: It was all right.

I have no memory of my mother ever kissing me.

Rosie Tanguay could take the studies and shove them right up her skinny behind. Bev knew why she smoked. She smoked for the same reason she ate: it gave her something to look forward to. It was as simple as that.

Driving home, Tommy was aware of a sensation like that of a tire becoming flat, as though he had been filled—all his life—with some sustaining air, and it was gone now; he felt, increasingly as he drove, a sense of fear. He could not understand it.

Be a chef, be a beggar, be divorced a zillion times, no one in this city cared. Smoke yourself to death out the window. Scare your wife and go to jail. It was heaven to live here. Susie never got that. Poor Susie.

And mentally, I don't believe, really, that I am one bit more out of my head than any other creature here on earth.

Living in a world where constantly one turned and touched incomprehension—they did not comprehend, he did not comprehend—gave the air the lift of uncertainty and this seemed to wear away something in him, always he felt unsure of what he wanted, what he thought, even what he felt. His

He thought you were just an older white woman writing about older white women." And I have to tell you, that stung me a bit.

I thought how when a person is really excited about something, it can be contagious.

You always find that, Mary. When the kid's in trouble, there's trouble at home.

If I had known what it would be like the next time that I saw them— Well, I did not know then. — It is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us.

The girl was neat as a pin, if plain as a plate.

Jim sat back, taking her hand. "We're going to have a terrific time, sweetheart. Just like the farty-looking couples in the brochures. It'll be great.

It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert.

complaining woman was like pushing dirt beneath the fingernails of God

No, they would never get over that night because they had said things that altered how they saw each other.

I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.

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.

I grew up on a dirt road in Maine, and pretty much everybody on that dirt road was related to me, and they were old. And so grumpy.

I sometimes miss the sense of excitement that I remember having when I was younger. I miss that sense of, 'Oh wow.' I think it's part of aging.

I don't want to live in Maine full time, but the physical beauty is very striking. It is the exact opposite of New York. When you walk through my small town to get a cup of coffee, you bump into five people you know.