Elizabeth Strout quotes

She didn't like to be alone. Even more, she didn't like being with people. (148) (Elizabeth Strout)
I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
Traits don't change, states of mind do. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
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 world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
I don't especially like to travel, not the way many people do. I know many people that love to go to far-off and different places, and I've never been like that. I seem to get homesick as quickly as a child. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
He wanted to put his arms around her, but she had a darkness that seemed to stand beside her like an acquaintance that would not go away. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
It's just that I'm the kind of person,' Rebecca continued, 'that thinks if you took a map of the whole world and put a pin in it for every person, there wouldn't be a pin for me. (Elizabeth Strout)
I've always been tremendously interested in criminal law. It goes to a deep interest I have in prisons and the criminal element, and what we do as a society with it. I've always been touched by the idea of criminality. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you're not quite there and you're redoing it and redoing it and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
I'm so interested in the fact that we really don't know anybody. We think we know the people close to us, but we don't, we really don't. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
I actually see myself in all my characters. In order to imagine what it feels like to be another person I have to use my own experiences and responses to the world. View quote
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. It literally has to earn its way through my hand. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
Bullies are just frightened people. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
Each of his son's had been his favorite child. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
If you get divorced in New York, you go into therapy and will talk to anybody you meet on the sidewalk about it. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it. (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 New York. When you walk through my small town to get a cup of coffee, you bump into five people you know. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
For years I did most of my reading on the F train between Brooklyn and Manhattan. I had long commutes, and I read tons of books on that train; I loved it. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it. View quote
Elizabeth Strout
I love the comfort of daily life's routines: things like being able to read a paper on the subway. It's no accident that my favourite word is 'quotidian.' View quote
Elizabeth Strout