Olive Kitteridge Quotes

“Earlier in their marriage, they’d had fights that had made Olive feel sick the way she felt now. But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“She had spells of manic loquaciousness, followed by days of silence.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“But never mind, Olive thinks now. You move aside and make way for the new.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“It was terrible, though, when you couldn't tell people things. Olive felt this keenly as the days went by.”
― elizabeth strout, Olive Kitteridge

“God, I'm scared,' he said, quietly. She almost said, 'Oh, stop. I hate scared people.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“A yearning stirred in him that was not sexual but a kind of reaching toward her simplicity of form. He”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“«Copper è venuto da me in sogno ieri notte. Non sembrava proprio un sogno. Potrei giurare che è venuto davvero da... be’, da ovunque si trovi adesso, per farmi una visita». Chinò la testa verso di lui, sbirciandolo attraverso il fumo. «Ti sembra pazzesco?».
Harmon alzò una spalla. «Non capisco come facciano gli altri ad avere informazioni riservate su certe cose, non importa quello in cui dichiarano di credere, o di non credere».”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“«Dio mio», aveva aggiunto Bunny, soffiandosi il naso. «A volte mi sembra di non poter mai vincere».
«Non puoi vincere», aveva risposto Henry. «Puoi solo fare del tuo meglio».”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“People like to think the younger generation’s job is to steer the world to hell. But it’s never true, is it? They’re hopeful and good—and that’s how it should be.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“Don’t be scared of your hunger. If you’re scared of your hunger, you’ll just be one more ninny like everyone else.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“a noted academic had said at a lecture last year. The dawning of a new age. There was always a new age dawning.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“She actually moved her neck back and forth as though to shake off the cumbersome weight of the sound, and realized that she had never liked music. It seemed to bring back all the shadows and aches of a lifetime.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“Anita's face got blank, like she couldn't find the expression to put on it.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“Molly Collins, standing next to Olive Kitteridge, both of them waiting along with the rest, has just looked around behind her at that side of the grocery store, and with a deep sigh says, “Such a nice woman. It isn’t right.” Olive Kitteridge, who is big-boned and taller by a head than Molly, reaches into her handbag for her sunglasses, and once she has them on, she squints hard at Molly Collins, because it seems such a stupid thing to say. Stupid—this assumption people have, that things should somehow be right.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“Hope was a cancer inside him. He didn’t want it; he did not want it. He could not bear these shoots of tender green hope springing up within him any longer.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“you don’t feel jealous of a woman whose husband has been lost. But an unreachability, that’s how she’d put it. This plump, kind-natured woman sitting on the couch surrounded by children,”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“who would mark a sweater, steal a bra, take one shoe?”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“It was the sudden memory of Jane Houlton in the waiting room that caused Olive to walk to the bed—the freedom of that ordinary banter, because Jack, in the doctor’s office, had needed her, had given her a place in the world.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“Fine, make beds, but find a way to keep using your head.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“never, never, never, never give up.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“they would never get over that night because they had said things that altered how they saw each other.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“She could make the bed, do the laundry, feed the dog. But she could not be bothered with any more meals. “What’ll we have for supper?” Henry would ask, coming upstairs from the basement. “Strawberries.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became. People thought love would do it, and maybe it did.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“Não gostava de estar sozinha. Mas gostava ainda menos de estar com gente.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“Earlier in their marriage, they’d had fights that had made Olive feel sick the way she felt now. But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“she seemed caught between the pincers of some intractable remorse.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“It was shame that swiped across her soul, like these windshield wipers before her: two large black long fingers, relentless and rhythmic in their chastisement.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“He felt her big presence, and imagined—fleetingly—that an elephant sat next to him, one that wanted to be a member of the human kingdom, and sweet in an innocent way, as though her stubs of forelegs were folded on her lap, her trunk moving just a little as she finished speaking.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“People know exactly who loves them, and how much—”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“the young, he thought, could withstand the rigors of love.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge