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Category: Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout

But she no longer felt sadness about it, the pressure of sorrow that had overtaken her at the table, the longing for all the Burgess kids, and the sense of the irreplaceable familiarity of her old life-that had passed the way the cramping of a stomach muscle passes, and the absence of its pain was glorious.

Elizabeth Strout

There are times now, and my life has changed so completely, that I think back on the early years and I find myself thinking: It was not that bad. Perhaps it was not. But there are times, too—unexpected—when walking down a sunny sidewalk, or watching the top of a tree bend in the wind, or seeing a November sky close down over the East River, I am suddenly filled with the knowledge of darkness so deep that a sound might escape from my mouth, and I will step into the nearest clothing store and talk with a stranger about the shape of sweaters newly arrived. This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don’t know how others are. So much of life seems speculation.

Elizabeth Strout

I like these experts because they seem decent, and because I feel I know a true sentence when I hear one now. They do not know what my mother remembered. I don’t know what my mother remembered either.

Elizabeth Strout

And he looked at me then, and with real kindness on his face, and I see now that he recognized what I did not: that in spite of my plenitude, I was lonely. Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.

Elizabeth Strout

She pictured a dandelion gone by, the white, almost airless pieces of her family scattered so far.

family, relationships

Elizabeth Strout

But early on I saw this: You are wasting time by suffering twice. I mention this only to show how many things the mind cannot will itself to do, even if it wants to.

daughter-mother-relationship, dread, family-relationships, worrying-over-nothing

Elizabeth Strout

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.

Elizabeth Strout

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.

disappointment, meanness

Elizabeth Strout

Jim. If you have any other outside events, don’t confess them. That’s my advice, okay?”“What am I going to do, Bob? I have no family.”“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.”Jim fell asleep, his head leaning forward almost to his chest

dialogue, life-experience

Elizabeth Strout

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

catholic, guilt, olive-kitteridge

Elizabeth Strout

This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly. But if you find yourself protecting anyone as you write this piece, remember this: You’re not doing it right.

love, motherhood, writing

Elizabeth Strout

She had spells of manic loquaciousness, followed by days of silence.