My Name Is Lucy Barton (Amgash #1)

by Elizabeth Strout

This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don’t know how others are. So much of life seems speculation.

that was when I learned that work gets done if you simply do it.

Then I understood I would never marry him. It’s funny how one thing can make you realize something like that. One can be ready to give up the children one always wanted, one can be ready to withstand remarks about one’s past, or one’s clothes, but then—a tiny remark and the soul deflates and says: Oh.

Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.

So life goes on, I thought. (And now I think: It goes on, until it doesn’t.)

Oh, he was a funny man. He could make the Devil laugh.” “Well, the Devil laughs easily,” I said, and my mother looked at me.