256 Quotes by Elizabeth Strout

I am the opposite of a snob.” Jack laughed a long time. “You think being a reverse snob is not being a snob? Olive, you’re a snob.

But the news reporters had no wish, perhaps no ability, to understand that the fishermen’s coastline had been spoiled with toxic waste, that they could not fish as they once had – Americans really did not understand desperation. It was easier, and certainly more pleasing, to view the Gulf of Aden as a lawless place where Somali pirates reigned. A crazy parent, America was. Good and openhearted one way, dismissive and cruel in others.

There was an old African proverb Dottie had read one day that said, “After a man eats, he becomes shy.” And Dottie thought of that now with Shelly. Shelly was like the man in the proverb; having satisfied her needs, she was ashamed. She had confided more than she had wanted to, and now Dottie was somehow to blame.

But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.

That day of the parade in the Village, I think – but I’m not sure – that William and I had a fight. Because I remember him saying, “Button, you just don’t get it, do you?” He meant I did not understand that I could be loved, was lovable. Very often he said that when we had a fight. He was the only man to call me “Button.” But he was not the last to say the other: You just don’t get it, do you?

She said that her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tel us who we are and what we think and what we do.

To listen to a person is not passive. To really listen is active, and Dottie had really listened.

Her grandmother said, “Don’t come back. Don’t get married. Don’t have children. All those things will bring you heartache.

He hated dishonesty – or lack of courage – more than anything.