256 Quotes by Elizabeth Strout

It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.

This must be the way most of us maneuver in the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the street, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don’t know how others are. So much of life seems speculation.

Only a few leaves of deep red remain on the otherwise bare limbs of the maples; the oak leaves are russet and wrinkled; briefly through the trees is the glimpse of the bay, flat and steel-gray today with the overcast November sky.

She came to understand that people had to decide, really, how they were going to live.

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.

She felt she had figured something out too late, and that must be the way of life, to get something figured out when it was too late.

Betty was still weeping, but she was smiling more too, and she said, “Oh, it’s just a life, Olive.” Olive thought about this. She said, “Well, it’s your life. It matters.

Angelina said, “Mom. I don’t want you to die. That’s the whole thing. You took from me the ability to care for you in your old age, and I wanted to be with you when you died, when you die. Mom. I wanted that.

You will have only one story,” she had said. “You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.