I would also hope that readers receive a larger understanding, or a different understanding, of what it means to be human, than they might have had before. We suffer from being quick to judge, quick to make excuses for ourselves… — 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 go. Perhaps it was nothing more than the two doughnuts expanding in her stomach full of milk, but Amy felt a heaviness begin, a familiar turning of some inward tide. As they drove over the bridge… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share
“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 some large and private club that she had not even known existed. Women who miscarried. Society did not care much for them. It really didn't. And the women in the club mostly passed each other silently.… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share
“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 see him. He’s not what we saw in the newspaper. He’s a frightened …” finishing softly: “child.” “We live now where there are laws,” Haweeya said soothingly. “He’s frightened because he broke the law.” Abdikarim continued to… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share
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
