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Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout Books

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Olive Kitteridge

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The Burgess Boys

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Abide With Me

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Oh William!

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Amy & Isabelle

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Amy and Isabelle

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Oh, William!

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“I feel almost, then, that I can hear within me the sound of my own heart breaking, the way you could hear outside in the open air-when the conditions were exactly right-the corn growing in the fields of my youth...You cannot hear my heart breaking, and I know that part is true, but to me, they are inseparable, the sound of growing corn and the sound of my heart breaking.”

HeartbreakMemories Of Childhood
Book:My Name Is Lucy Barton
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“Inside the music like this, she understood many things. She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at this age, to tell her he had pitied her for years. She understood that as he drove his car back down the coast toward Boston, toward his wife with whom he had raised three children, that something in him would be satisfied to have witnessed her the way he had tonight, and she understood that this form of comfort was true for many people, as it made Malcolm feel better to call Walter Dalton a pathetic fairy, but it was thin milk, this form of nourishment; it could not change that you had wanted to be a concert pianist and ended up a real estate lawyer, that you had married a woman and stayed married to her for thirty years, when she did not ever find you lovely in bed.”

DisappointmentMeanness
Book:Olive Kitteridge
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“He thought of the words of the hymn he had always loved: Help of the helpless, O abide with me. He knew one could say - perhaps Rhonda Skillings might say - that this was merely the plea of a frightened child reaching up in the dark to hold the hand of Parent God. But Tyler, softly humming the tune as he stood beneath the elm - fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide - thought God existed in the hymn itself, in the yearning and sorrowful acknowledgment of the loneliness and fears that arrived in life.”

GodAcceptanceGod S PresenceHymn
Book:Abide With Me
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“I mention this because there is the question of how children become aware of what the world is, and how to act in it. How, for example, do you learn that it is impolite to ask a couple why they have no children? How do you set a table? How do you know if you are chewing with your mouth open if no one has ever told you? How do you even know what you look like if the only mirror in the house is a tiny one high above the kitchen sink, or if you have never heard a living soul say that you are pretty, but rather, as your breasts develop, are told by your mother that you are starting to look like one of the cows in the Pedersons’ barn?”

Children
Book:My Name Is Lucy Barton
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“And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats--then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water--seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed.”

Hope
Book:Olive Kitteridge
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“And he felt too old to learn English. Without that, he lived with the constancy of incomprehension. In the post office last month he had mimed and pointed to a square white box, the woman in her blue shirt repeating and repeating and he did not know and everyone in the post office knew and finally a man came to him and crossed his arms quickly toward the floor, saying, “Fini!” And so Abdikarim thought the post office was finished with him and he must go and he did go. Later he found out the post office was out of the boxes they had sitting on the shelf with price tags on them. Why did they show them if they did not have them to sell? Again, the incomprehension. He came to understand this had a danger altogether different from the dangers in the camp. Living in a world where constantly one turned and touched incomprehension—they did not comprehend, he did not comprehend—gave the air the lift of uncertainty and this seemed to wear away something in him, always he felt unsure of what he wanted, what he thought, even what he felt.”

Language Barrier
Book:The Burgess Boys
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“Along the top of the soot-darkened wall of the parking area, barbed wire lay coiled, as though even the littered and unlovely motel lot posed such threat—or value—that it was immediately at war with the rest of the world. For Charlie, this seemed to prove the futility of the dreams presented in the department store windows he had walked by earlier... 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 sourly that one's contribution to the world was only more excrement.”

Void Within
Book:Anything Is Possible
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“Il silenzio, là dove avevano riecheggiato per tanti anni il suono della voce di Pam, le sue chiacchiere, le risate, le opinioni taglienti, gli improvvisi scoppi di pianto. L’assenza di tutto questo, il silenzio di una doccia che non scorreva, di cassetti che non si aprivano, perfino il silenzio di se stesso, che quando rientrava in casa non parlava, non raccontava a nessuno la sua giornata. Quel silenzio quasi lo uccideva.”

SolitudinePerdita
Book:The Burgess Boys
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“What young people didn’t know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn’t choose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered. And so, if this man next to her now was not a man she would have chosen before this time, what did it matter: He most likely wouldn’t have chosen her either. But here they were, and Olive pictured two slices of Swiss cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union—what pieces life took out of you. Her eyes were closed, and throughout her tired self swept waves of gratitude—and regret. She pictured the sunny room, the sun-washed wall, the bayberry outside. It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.”

MarriageGrowing Older
Author:Elizabeth Strout
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