Elizabeth Strout

“It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.”

— Elizabeth Strout

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

— Elizabeth Strout

Bullies are just frightened people.

— Elizabeth Strout

“...she feels her stomach turn choppy, whitecaps in her stomach.”

— Elizabeth Strout

Traits don't change, states of mind do.

— Elizabeth Strout

“I loved New York for this gift of endless encounters.”

— Elizabeth Strout

“They had grown up on shame; it was the nutrient of their soil.”

— Elizabeth Strout

Each of his son's had been his favorite child.

— Elizabeth Strout

'Pnin' by Vladimir Nabokov, which is a literally small book, fit right in my common law book. I would sit in class…

— Elizabeth Strout

I grew up on a dirt road in Maine, and pretty much everybody on that dirt road was related to me, and…

— Elizabeth Strout

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

— Elizabeth Strout

“She knows that loneliness can kill people - in different ways can actually make you die. (68)”

— Elizabeth Strout

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

— Elizabeth Strout

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic--you were made to feel guilty about everything

— Elizabeth Strout

“She didn't like to be alone. Even more, she didn't like being with people.”

— Elizabeth Strout

“This was the skin that protected you from the world—this loving of another person you shared your life with.”

— Elizabeth Strout

“Jim, because he was angry even back then and trying to control it, she felt, and Bob because his heart was big.…

— Elizabeth Strout

“The truth is, Bob, they need those immigrants. Maine’s been losing its young people—you and I are a perfect case in point.…

— Elizabeth Strout

Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what…

— Elizabeth Strout

“You could buy a snow blower or a nice wool dress for your wife, but beneath it all people were rats scurrying…

— Elizabeth Strout

I'm drawn to New England because that's where my roots are, and I miss it. I come from many generations of New…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Oh, she was a crazy woman, privately. Absolutely nuts. She was so mad at Jim O'Casey. She was so mad, she went…

— Elizabeth Strout

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…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Rebecca, standing at the window, felt a tiny smile inside her getting larger - how delicious it would be: one moment of…

— Elizabeth Strout

“But what Tyler longed for was to have The Feeling arrive; when every flicker of light that touched the dipping branches of…

— Elizabeth Strout

“So she way awake at night and at times there was a curious peacefulness to this, the darkness warm as though the…

— Elizabeth Strout

“She could not have predicted, no one can ever predict anything, that they’d have been raised at a time of protests and…

— Elizabeth Strout

The fact of the matter is I always have a really high sense of responsibility to the reader, whether it's a few…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Kathie Nicely always wanted more. I often thought the reason she was friends with me—oh, I don’t know if you could call…

— Elizabeth Strout

Back and forth she went each morning by the river, spring arriving once again; foolish, foolish spring, breaking open its tiny buds,…

— Elizabeth Strout

Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as "big bursts" and "little bursts." Big bursts are things…

— Elizabeth Strout

“And then later, as the ambulance went faster, Abel felt not fear but a strange exquisite joy, the bliss of things finally…

— Elizabeth Strout

“The night in the hospital when I felt I had been unkind to my mother by saying that I did not think…

— Elizabeth Strout

“What young people didn’t know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Awful to think she was a disapproving mother. Awful to wonder-had she always frightened Amy? Is that why the girl had grown…

— Elizabeth Strout

“But in glimpses of herself—shouting at Steve, at Zach—she recognized her own mother, and Susan’s face burned with shame. She had never…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Through the trees there was a motion, a person walking on the road. Isabelle watched as the girl - it was Amy…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Annie, who up until this very day had always felt like a child--which is why she could not marry, she could not…

— Elizabeth Strout

“For most of the nineteen years of Zachary’s life, Susan had done what parents do when their child turns out to be…

— Elizabeth Strout

“I loved her,”I said. I did not say I loved her because she was good to my cousin Abel, good to me,…

— Elizabeth Strout