Oh, I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite. Although sometimes there are sections, sometimes you're just lucky and… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way, and you know you're not quite there,… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
In the kind of New England I'm from, you are expected to stay and marry somebody from New England - well, Maine,… — Elizabeth Strout Copy Share Image
The purpose of fiction is not to make people seem nice. What makes anyone think people are nice? Look around you! — 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
