Olive, Again (Olive Kitteridge, #2)

by Elizabeth Strout

“To bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”

And it came to him then that it should never be taken lightly, the essential loneliness of people, that the choices they made to keep themselves from that gaping darkness were choices that required respect:

the way people can love those they barely know, and how abiding that love can be, and also how deep that love can be, even when—as in her own case—it was temporary.