I don’t think there’s anybody I write about who I don’t care for deeply in some way, no matter what their behavior is. Elizabeth Strout Read Quote
I got a gerontology certificate a million years ago along with my law degree, so I’ve been interested in older people for many years. Some people grow up with a lot of kids around, but I just grew up with a lot of old people. Elizabeth Strout Read Quote
I like people a lot, but I am not comfortable in literary New York situations. There is deep anxiety and tension around success here. I don’t share problems I’m having about my work, and I think conversations around publishing are boring. Elizabeth Strout Read Quote
The purpose of fiction is not to make people seem nice. What makes anyone think people are nice? Look around you! Elizabeth Strout Read Quote
As a novelist, I like the contained drama and complexity of the courtroom, though I don’t watch those shows on TV. I prefer the hospital shows because I wanted to be a doctor. Elizabeth Strout Read Quote
I love the comfort of daily life’s routines: things like being able to read a paper on the subway. It’s no accident that my favourite word is ‘quotidian.’ Elizabeth Strout Read Quote
I’m so deeply interested in what it feels like to be other people that I get to operate under the illusion when I’m writing fiction that I’m not really revealing that much about myself. But, of course, I am, and I know that I am. And yet there’s this sort of membrane that I get to work behind as I write my fiction, and I love it. Elizabeth Strout Read Quote
In the kind of New England I’m from, you are expected to stay and marry somebody from New England – well, Maine, actually – so I think it was seen as a betrayal when I left for New York, which has been my refuge. Elizabeth Strout Read Quote
I’m drawn to New England because that’s where my roots are, and I miss it. I come from many generations of New Englanders, and so, in my writing, I’ve been drawn back there to the landscape and the light and the type of personality that’s revealed. Elizabeth Strout Read Quote
I don’t know if I have a memory of not thinking I was a writer – it goes that far back. I went to law school because I didn’t know how to earn a living otherwise. I tried to ignore the pull, but it wouldn’t let me. Elizabeth Strout Read Quote
