Elizabeth Strout

“'Pnin' by Vladimir Nabokov, which is a literally small book, fit right in my common law book. I would sit in class and read it.”

“All life amazes me.”

“I've always been tremendously interested in criminal law. It goes to a deep interest I have in prisons and the criminal element, and what we do as a society with it. I've always been touched by the idea of criminality.”

“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.”

“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...”

“She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at ths age, to tell her he had pitied her for years.”