“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 Copy Share Image
I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
I'm so deeply interested in what it feels like to be other people that I get to operate under the illusion when… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
In a way, I'm very interested in writing about Maine, because I think Maine represents its own kind of history. It's the… — 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
Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I do write by hand. I just think - I don't know, it's a physical thing for me. It's a bodily thing.… — 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
