“But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“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, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“Awful to think she was a disapproving mother. Awful to wonder-had she always frightened Amy? Is that why the girl had grown up so fearful, always ducking her head? It was bewildering to Isablle. Bewildering that you could harm a child without even knowing, thinking all the while you were being careful, conscientious. But it was a terrible feeling. More terrible than having Avery Clark forget to come to her house. Knowing that her child had grown up frightened. Except it was cockeyed, all backwards, because, thought Isabelle, glancing back at her daughter, I've been frightened of you.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“If she were Catholic, she could kneel, kneel and bow her head inside a church with brilliant stained-glass windows and streaks of golden light falling over her. Yes, oh yes, she would kneel and stretch out her arms, holding to her Amy and Dottie and Bev.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“By the time they were pulling into the parking lot of the A&P, the mood was fading, the moment gone. Amy could feel it go. Perhaps it was nothing more than the two doughnuts expanding in her stomach full of milk, but Amy felt a heaviness begin, a familiar turning of some inward tide. As they drove over the bridge the sun seemed to move from a cheerful daytime yellow to an early-evening gold; painful how the gold light hit the riverbanks, rich and sorrowful, drawing from Amy some longing, a craving for joy.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“Isabelle's moods began to vary with alarming speed. She wondered if she had always been this way and simply failed to notice. No. Good heavens, you noticed something like this: driving to the A&P feeling collected and cozy, as though your clothes fit around you exactly right, and by the time you drove home feeling completely undone, because as you walked across the parking lot the smell of the grocery bag you held in your arms mingled with the smell of spring and produced some scrape of longing in your heart. Frankly, it was exhausting. Because for all those moments of hope that God was near, of some bursting, some widening seeming to take place in her heart, Isabelle had other moments that could only be described as rage. (117)”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“The disabilities of the people who came to him were established so young, in such delicate years, that their tender agonies were, by the time they arrived in his office, thickened into a stunned arrangement of expressions, deflections, and shrewd manipulations. No,”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“Through the trees there was a motion, a person walking on the road. Isabelle watched as the girl - it was Amy - moving slowly and with her head down, came up the gravel driveway. The sight of her pained Isabelle. It pained her terribly to see her, but why?
Because she looked unhappy, her shoulders slumped like that, her neck thrust forward, walking slowly, just about dragging her feet. This was Isabelle's daughter; this was Isabelle's fault. She hadn't done it right, being a mother, and this youthful desolation walking up the driveway was exactly proof of that. But then Amy straightened up, glancing toward the house with a wary squint, and she seemed transformed to Isabelle, suddenly a presence to be reckoned with. Her limbs were long and even, her breasts beneath her T-shirt seemed round and right, neither large or small, only part of some pleasing symmetry; her face looked intelligent and shrewd. Isabelle, sitting motionless in her chair, felt intimidated.
And angry. The anger arrived in one quick thrust. It was the sight of her daughter's body that angered her. It was not the girl's unpleasantness, or even the fact that she had been lying to Isabelle for so many months, nor did Isabelle hate Amy for taken up all the space in her life. She hated Amy because the girl had been enjoying the sexual pleasures of a man, while she herself had not.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“She wanted to be dead and she wanted her daughter to be dead too so that neither of them would have to face the unbearable business of continuing on. It”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“Spense la sigaretta nel portacenere. Non si sarebbe messa a lamentarsi, non era più una bambina. Ma le restava dentro un dolore. E un suono continuo e sommesso, il debole riverbero qualcosa di simile alla gioia, continuava a vivere ai margini della sua memoria, una qualche specie di desiderio che un tempo aveva trovato risposta e ora, semplicemente, non più.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“An alcoholic. Amy stopped pushing her thumb against the dashboard. His mother had not been baking cookies. Probably she had been upstairs drinking gin from a bottle stored under the bed. Amy didn’t have a clear idea of what a woman alcoholic (a mother alcoholic) would be like, but her own mother had told her once that such women got very sneaky, hiding bottles under their bed.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“An ache stayed inside her. And a faint reverberating hum of something close to joy lived on the outer edges of her memory, some kind of longing that had been answered once and was simply not answered anymore.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“He was watching her, leaning back in the chair with his arms crossed. His face was serious and kind; she saw he wasn’t making fun. He spoke softly, his head bent forward with concern. “A woman should learn to take a compliment gracefully,” he said.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable. Dottie,”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
“To be watched made her uneasy, as though she had to compete with every other person he might gaze upon, and she had known for quite some time that competing was not what she did best. Even as a child this had been true; the game of musical chairs had filled her with panic — that dreadful, icy knowledge that when the music stopped someone would be out. It was better when she stopped trying, because there were so many things a young person was required to endure: spelling bees, endless games in gym class; in all these things she had stopped trying, or if she tried, she did so with little expectation of herself, so was not disappointed to misspell “glacier” in a fourth-grade spelling bee, or to strike out in softball because she never swung the bat. It became a habit, not trying, and in junior high, when the biggest prize of course was to be popular among the right friends, Amy found she lacked the fortitude once more to get in there and swing. Arriving at the point where she felt almost invisible, she was aware that her solitude was something she might have brought upon herself. But here was Mr. Robertson and she was not invisible to him. Not when he looked at her like that—she couldn't be. (Still, there was her inner tendency to flee, the recrudescence of self-doubt.) But his hand came forward and touched her elbow.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from Amy and Isabelle
Elizabeth Strout
Born place: in Portland, Maine, The United States
Born date January 6, 1956
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“The unvisited grannies, in stone houses by the wheat field, can't remember their husbands or children. They worry their hands, though, hands that could do with a rinsing. The grannies think:
We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn't as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“Look, Aerin, preparation is only half the challenge of winning a debate.”
“And the other half?”
He had her now. “You have to choose the right side.”
“Your side, you mean.” She bristled.
“No, the losing side.”
“What?”
“Always choose the weaker side.”
“Why would I do that?” Doubt edged her voice, but now she was sitting erect, her feet flat on the floor.
“Because then you have further to go to prove your case.” He eased the feet of his chair down. “In a debate, there are two sides. If both make a good argument, then the less popular side wins because that side had further to go to prove its point. Simple logistics.”
“If you don’t care which side wins.” She frowned.
“It’s a debate. It doesn’t matter which side wins.”
“You mean it doesn’t matter to you.” The tone in her voice unsettled him. Or maybe it was the fact that that her criticism disturbed him at all.
“It’s a class,” he said. “The point is to flesh out the different sides of an argument.”
“And you don’t care if the truth gets lost in the shuffle. Don’t you believe in anything?!”
― Anne Osterlund, quote from Academy 7
“-No me lo prometas a mí, Cass. Prométetelo a ti misma.”
― Y.S. Lee, quote from A Spy in the House
“Anybody who can belive six impossible things before breakfast wins hands down in this game.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Murder Is Easy
“I pictured the two of them alone. Perhaps showering together, as Rome and I liked to do. My stomach clenched painfully, amusement forgotten. “Cody, will you take me to the nearest clinic? I need someone to dig the knife out of my back. Lexis might need it again. And the good doctor might want to give me a tetanus shot. I think she bled on me.” Stunned silence. I often had that effect.”
― Gena Showalter, quote from Twice as Hot
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