256 Quotes by Elizabeth Strout

People always kept moving, her mother had said, it's the American way. Moving west, moving south, marrying up, marrying down, getting divorced - but moving...

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.

He had a friend. He would have said this if he could, he would have said it, but there was no need: Like his sweet Sophia who loved her Snowball, Abel had a friend. 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.

Olive can understand why Chris has never bothered having many friends. He is like her that way, can’t stand the blah-blah-blah. And they’d just as soon blah-blah-blah about you when your back is turned.

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic--you were made to feel guilty about everything

You could buy a snow blower or a nice wool dress for your wife, but beneath it all people were rats scurrying off to find garbage to eat, another rat to hump, making a nest in broken bricks, and soiling it so sourly that one's contribution to the world was only more excrement.

I never wrote him. I never saw him again. He was just gone, this dear, dear man, this friend of my soul in the hospital so long ago, disappeared. This is a New York story too.

They had grown up on shame; it was the nutrient of their soil.

I was doing what I have done for most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don't know they have embarrassed themselves.