256 Quotes by Elizabeth Strout

Everyone, she understood, was mainly and mostly interested in themselves.

And Olive thought about this: the way people can love those they barely know, and how abiding that love can be, and also how deep that love can be, even when – as in her own case – it was temporary. She thought of Betty and her stupid bumper sticker, and the child who had been so frightened that Halima Butterfly had told her about, and yet to tell any of this right now to Betty, who was genuinely suffering – as Olive had suffered – seemed cruel, and she kept silent.

Olive glanced at him quickly. He was crying. She looked away, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him reach into his pocket, heard him blow his nose, a real honk. “My wife died in December,” he said. Olive watched the river. “Then, you’re in hell,” she said. “Then, I’m in hell.

And for a moment Annie wondered at this, that her brother and sister, good, responsible, decent, fair-minded, had never known the passion that caused a person to risk everything they had, everything they held dear heedlessly put in danger – simply to be near the white dazzle of the sun that somehow for those moments seemed to leave the earth behind.

This is Lucy.” She added, almost playfully, “Lucy comes from nothing.” I took no offense, and really, I take none now. But I think: No one in this world comes from nothing.

Loss is an assault; a certain exhaustion, as strong as the pull of the moon on the tides, needs to be allowed for eventually.

And so the day they had had together folded over on itself, was done with, gone.

But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.

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.