“This was the skin that protected you from the world—this loving of another person you shared your life with.” — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“It was a sad moment. There are sad moments in life, and this was one of them.” — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
I love the comfort of daily life's routines: things like being able to read a paper on the subway. It's no accident… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“life picked up speed, and then most of it was gone—made you breathless, really.” — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
I don't know if I have a memory of not thinking I was a writer - it goes that far back. I… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“Speaking of this, he felt something had been returned to him, as though the inestimable losses of life had been lifted like… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life,… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“Had they known at these moments to be queitly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
I would hope that my readers feel a sense of awe at the quality of human endurance, at the endurance of love… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“But here they were, and Olive pictured two slices of Swiss cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union--what pieces… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“The year that followed - was it the happiest year of his own life? He often thought so, even knowing that such… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“She felt she had figured something out too late, and that must be the way of life, to get something figured out… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“But I know that money is a big thing, in a marriage, in a life, money is power, I do know that.… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
By the time they were pulling into the parking lot of the A&P, the mood was fading, the moment gone. Amy could feel it… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“I said on the phone to my mother, “I think I’m going to write the story of the Burgess kids.” “It’s a good one,”… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“And she learned - freshly, scorchingly - of the privacy of sorrow. It was as though she had been escorted through a door into… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“He looked at the books, and she wanted to say, 'Stop that,' as though he were reading her diary.” — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“The year that followed - was it the happiest year of his own life? He often thought so, even knowing that such a thing… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
I have to pay attention to what I have felt and observed, then push these responses to an extreme while keeping the story within… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“She could hear in the darkness of her car how his breathing was quicker now; and her own was, too. She wanted to say… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
“Abdikarim shook his head in his darkened room, sweat coming from his face down onto his neck. “No, he cuts my heart. You didn’t… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
I like people a lot, but I am not comfortable in literary New York situations. There is deep anxiety and tension around success here.… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
The fact of the matter is I always have a really high sense of responsibility to the reader, whether it's a few readers that… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
