256 Quotes by Elizabeth Strout

If you find yourself protecting anyone as you write this piece, remember this: You’re not doing it right.

And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been a time when she’d felt a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist’s gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes.

I see.” I didn’t see, though. How do we ever see something about our own self?

So – you’re a writer. You’re an artist.

Because in February the days were really getting longer and you could see it, if you really looked. You could see how at the end of each day the world seemed cracked open and the extra light made its way across the stark trees, and promised. It promised, that light, and what a thing that was.

And if such a gift could come to him at such a time, then anything – dear girl from Rockford dressed up for her meeting, rushing above the Rock River – he opened his eyes, and yes, there it was, the perfect knowledge: Anything was possible for anyone.

My more tenderhearted daughter, Becka, said to me during this time, “Mom, when you write a novel you get to rewrite it, but when you live with someone for twenty years, that is the novel, and you can never write that novel with anyone again!” How did she know this, my dear, dear child? At such a young age she knew this. When she told me, I looked at her. I said, “You’re right.

He put the blinker on, pulled out onto the avenue. “Well, that was nice,” she said, sitting back. They had fun together these days, they really did. It was as if marriage had been a long, complicatd meal, and now there was this lovely dessert.

It seems to Henry, as he takes his seat in his usual middle pew, that women are far braver than men.