Elizabeth Strout

“...and they undoubtedly think that will last, the way new couples do. They think they're finished with loneliness, too.”

— Elizabeth Strout

And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and…

— Elizabeth Strout

“We're two lonely people having supper." "Exactly." said Bunny. "That's a date.”

— Elizabeth Strout

I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be…

— Elizabeth Strout

“It was always sad, the way the world was going. And always a new age dawning.”

— Elizabeth Strout

“She pictured a dandelion gone by, the white, almost airless pieces of her family scattered so far.”

— Elizabeth strout

“It was terrible, though, when you couldn't tell people things. Olive felt this keenly as the days went by.”

— elizabeth strout

“bodies becoming like prisons with the person stuck inside. Screaming, or not screaming, but staring at you like you should do something.”

— Elizabeth Strout

I sometimes miss the sense of excitement that I remember having when I was younger. I miss that sense of, 'Oh wow.'…

— Elizabeth Strout

“She could hear in the darkness of her car how his breathing was quicker now; and her own was, too. She wanted…

— Elizabeth Strout

I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life,…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Helen worked in her back garden, planting her tulip and crocus bulbs. Her irritation with the world had dampened into a cushion…

— Elizabeth Strout

“No one, to my knowledge, has figured out the secret to love. We love imperfectly, Tyler. We all do. Even Jesus wrestled…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Well, it seems insane,” Bob finally said. “But it comes from our Puritan ancestors. Who were kind of insane, when you think…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Why do you need everyone married?" Christopher has said to him angrily, when Henry has asked about his son's life. "Why can't…

— Elizabeth Strout

“But Lucy loved them, she loved her mother, and her mother loved her! We’re all just a mess, Angelina, trying as hard…

— Elizabeth Strout

“And suddenly it seemed to Olive that every house she had ever gone into depressed her, except for her own, and the…

— Elizabeth Strout

“But the news reporters had no wish, perhaps no ability, to understand that the fishermen’s coastline had been spoiled with toxic waste,…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Bob was not a young man, and he knew about loss. He knew the quiet that arrived, the blinding force of panic,…

— Elizabeth Strout

But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took…

— Elizabeth Strout

“And for a moment Annie wondered at this, that her brother and sister, good, responsible, decent, fair-minded, had never known the passion…

— Elizabeth Strout

You couldn't make yourself stop feeling a certain way, no matter what the other person did. You had to just wait. Eventually…

— Elizabeth Strout

“The year that followed - was it the happiest year of his own life? He often thought so, even knowing that such…

— Elizabeth Strout

“I said on the phone to my mother, “I think I’m going to write the story of the Burgess kids.” “It’s a…

— Elizabeth Strout

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

— Elizabeth Strout

“She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at this age, to tell her he had pitied her for…

— Elizabeth Strout

“life picked up speed, and then most of it was gone—made you breathless, really.”

— Elizabeth Strout

“My mother did not like Unitarians; she thought they were atheists who didn’t want to be left out of the fun of…

— Elizabeth Strout

“A yearning stirred in him that was not sexual but a kind of reaching toward her simplicity of form. He”

— Elizabeth Strout

Oh, gosh, Olive. I'm so embarrassed." "No need to be," Olive tells her. "We all want to kill someone at some point." (179)

— Elizabeth Strout

“Well, widow-comforter, how is she?" Olive spoke in the dark from the bed. "Struggling," he said. "Who isn't?”

— Elizabeth Strout

The purpose of fiction is not to make people seem nice. What makes anyone think people are nice? Look around you!

— Elizabeth Strout

“one of those things about getting older was knowing that so many moments weren’t just moments, they were gifts.”

— Elizabeth Strout

“She always played his song because whenever she saw him, it was like moving into a warm pocket of air.”

— Elizabeth Strout

Oh that's lovely," said Bunny. "Olive, you've got a date." "Why would you say something so foolish?" Olive asked, really annoyed. "We're…

— Elizabeth Strout

You have family", Bob said. "You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister…

— Elizabeth Strout

I got a gerontology certificate a million years ago along with my law degree, so I've been interested in older people for…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Pam replied that she was too old to worry about being cool, but in fact she did worry about it, and that’s…

— Elizabeth Strout

“You've been through a great deal," his mother conceded. "But the back strengthens to the burdens it has to bear, and I'd…

— Elizabeth Strout

“When word came that Keith had died of cancer, Abel was astonished. That astonishment had to do with death, with the wiping…

— Elizabeth Strout