Elizabeth Strout

I don't want to live in Maine full time, but the physical beauty is very striking. It is the exact opposite of…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Awful to think she was a disapproving mother. Awful to wonder-had she always frightened Amy? Is that why the girl had grown…

— Elizabeth Strout

Bullies are just frightened people.

— 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

I don't ever really know where I get my characters from.

— Elizabeth Strout

“A lot of people don't have families. . . . . But they still have homes.”

— Elizabeth Strout

“He took down the curtains that hung in front of the blinds and washed them in the old washing machine. In his…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Annie, who up until this very day had always felt like a child--which is why she could not marry, she could not…

— 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

I actually see myself in all my characters. In order to imagine what it feels like to be another person I have…

— Elizabeth Strout

“She pictured a dandelion gone by, the white, almost airless pieces of her family scattered so far. The key to contentment was…

— Elizabeth Strout

“But I know that money is a big thing, in a marriage, in a life, money is power, I do know that.…

— Elizabeth Strout

Back and forth she went each morning by the river, spring arriving once again; foolish, foolish spring, breaking open its tiny buds,…

— Elizabeth Strout

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

The facts didn't matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.

— Elizabeth Strout

“But Henry was pretty irritating himself, with his steadfast way of remaining naive, as though life were just what a Sears catalogue…

— Elizabeth Strout

She didn't like to be alone. Even more, she didn't like being with people. (148)

— Elizabeth Strout

“But in glimpses of herself—shouting at Steve, at Zach—she recognized her own mother, and Susan’s face burned with shame. She had never…

— Elizabeth Strout

My parents were very, very, very strict.

— Elizabeth Strout

“She had spells of manic loquaciousness, followed by days of silence.”

— Elizabeth Strout

“And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in…

— Elizabeth Strout

“Living in a world where constantly one turned and touched incomprehension—they did not comprehend, he did not comprehend—gave the air the lift…

— Elizabeth Strout

For years I did most of my reading on the F train between Brooklyn and Manhattan. I had long commutes, and I…

— Elizabeth Strout

No exchange rate for the confidence of youth.

— Elizabeth Strout

As a novelist, I like the contained drama and complexity of the courtroom, though I don't watch those shows on TV. I…

— Elizabeth Strout