256 Quotes by Elizabeth Strout

You’re an easy woman to please,” he had said to her. And she had said, “You may be the first person to think that.

People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.

My mother told me in the hospital that day that I was not like my brother and sister: “Look at your life right now. You just went ahead and... did it.” Perhaps she meant that I was already ruthless. Perhaps she meant that, but I don’t know what my mother meant.

It’s not my job to make readers know what’s a narrative voice and not the private view of the author,” and that alone made me glad I had come.

There is that constant judgment in this world: How are we going to make sure we do not feel inferior to another?

It is true she doesn’t exercise, her cholesterol is sky-high. But all that is only a good excuse, hiding how it’s her soul, really, that is wearing out.

When word came that Keith had died of cancer, Abel was astonished. That astonishment had to do with death, with the wiping out of a person, with the puzzlement that the man was simply gone.

I suspect I said nothing because I was doing what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don’t know they have embarrassed themselves. I do this, I think, because it could be me a great deal of the time.

It was the sound of my mother’s voice I most wanted; what she said didn’t matter. And.