Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)

by Elizabeth Strout

All these unrecorded lives, and people just live them.”

We like to think that our lives are within our control, but they may not be completely so. We are necessarily influenced by those who have come before us.

And so time passed by as it does—often strangely: so slowly and then a chunk is gone.

People always tell you who they are if you just listen—they will always eventually tell you who they are.

“Bob, I think that we are all standing on shifting sand.” She did not look at him as she spoke. “I mean, we don’t ever really know another person. And so we make them up according to when they came into our lives,

People suffer. They live, they have hope, they even have love, and they still suffer. Everyone does. Those who think they’ve not suffered are lying to themselves.