Quote

In case you haven't noticed, people get hard-hearted against the people they hurt. Because they can't stand it. Literally. To think we did that to someone. I did that. So we think of all the reasons why it's okay we did whatever we did.

Elizabeth Strout

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Elizabeth Strout
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: January 6
Author
Novelist
Writer
Portland
Maine
Hurt
Literally
Whatever
Reasons
Someone
Havens
Reason
Haven
Hard
Case
Think
Okay
Thinking
Cases
Hearted
People
Stand
Noticed

More quotes by Elizabeth Strout

Image
Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
She remembered was hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became. (211)
Elizabeth Strout
Image
I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
The appetites of the body were private battles.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
Traits don't change, states of mind do.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
He wanted to put his arms around her, but she had a darkness that seemed to stand beside her like an acquaintance that would not go away.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
People like to think the younger generation's job is to steer the world to hell. But it's never true, is it? They're hopeful and good - and that's how it should be.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
I do write by hand. I just think - I don't know, it's a physical thing for me. It's a bodily thing. It literally has to earn its way through my hand.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
The facts didn't matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
You have family, Bob said. You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane. And a nephew who used to be kind of a drip but apparently is not so much of a drip now. That's called family.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
She didn't like to be alone. Even more, she didn't like being with people. (148)
Elizabeth Strout
Image
You couldn't make yourself stop feeling a certain way, no matter what the other person did. You had to just wait. Eventually the feeling went away because others came along. Or sometimes it didn't go away but got squeezed into something tiny, and hung like a piece of tinsel in the back of your mind.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
The key to contentment was to never ask why she had learned that long ago.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
Oh, gosh, Olive. I'm so embarrassed. No need to be, Olive tells her. We all want to kill someone at some point. (179)
Elizabeth Strout
Image
I'm so interested in the fact that we really don't know anybody. We think we know the people close to us, but we don't, we really don't.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
The evenings grew longer kitchen windows stayed open after dinner and peepers could be heard in the marsh. Isabelle, stepping out to sweep her porch steps, felt absolutely certain that some wonderful change was arriving in her life. The strength of this belief was puzzling what she was feeling, she decided, was really the presence of God.
Elizabeth Strout
Image
Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic--you were made to feel guilty about everything
Elizabeth Strout