Tell Me Everything Quotes

“And yet, as is often the case, those of us who need love so badly at a particular moment can be off-putting to those who want to love us, and to those who do love us.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love. If it is love, then it is love.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“To be in love when the outcome is uncertain is an exquisite kind of agony.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“That was about the same thing that every story Lucy and I have shared is about. 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.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“Yet one has to wonder about the toll it takes, the lack of being touched or held. So many people are not.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“Bob was a sin-eater—”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“I wonder how many people out there are able to be strong—or strong enough—because of the person they’re married to.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“These are broken people. Big difference between being a broken person and being evil. In case you don’t know. And if you don’t think everyone is broken in some way, you’re wrong. I’m telling you this because you have been so fortunate in your life, you probably don’t even know such broken people exist.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“most just could not really care past their own experiences.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“He had told this story to Margaret when they first met, he had also told his first wife, Pam Carlson, and they were both kind about it, but it was one of Bob’s adult understandings: People did not care, except for maybe one minute. It was not their fault, most just could not really care past their own experiences. —”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“Lucy said, contemplatively, “I wonder how many people in long marriages live with ghosts beside them.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“The heart wants what the heart wants. This is true, and Bob’s heart still wanted Lucy. But there is another thing to consider, which is that the heart is only one part of an organism, and the organism’s job is to survive. This desire to survive was already in ascendance with Bob, and this desire grew, and the desire of his heart— It did not shrink, but it did not continue to grow.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“Tell me every single thing. And don’t leave anything out.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“All these unrecorded lives, and people just live them.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“Lucy said, looking at him now, “My point is that every person on this earth is so complicated. Bob, we’re also complicated, and we match up for a moment—or maybe a lifetime—with somebody because we feel that we are connected to them. And we are. But we’re not in a certain way because nobody can go into the crevices of another’s mind, even the person can’t go into the crevices of their own mind, and we live— all of us— as though we can.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love. If it is love, then it is love.” —”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“And who—who who who in this whole entire world—does not want to be heard?”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“...like many of us, he does not know himself as well as he assumes to, he would never believe he had anything worthy in his life to document. But he does; we all do.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“Yuh. So that’s the story of Janice Tucker.” Lucy was silent for quite a while. And then she said, “She was a sin-eater.” “What did you say?” Olive spoke this loudly. “I said, she was a sin-eater.” “What in hell is a sin-eater?” Lucy shook her head slowly. “Some people on this earth eat other people’s sins, and that’s what Janice did her entire life, starting with her father and her stepmother and then with that professor creep—who, had he behaved that way now, would be outed and fired—and then crazy Oliver that she got involved with after dropping out. She just kept eating people’s sins.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“These are broken people. Big difference between being a broken person and being evil.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“We are all standing on shifting sand. It shook him.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“I wonder how many people in long marriages live with ghosts beside them.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“she had her story, as we all have our stories.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“I hate getting older,” Bob said. “I think that adds to my terror. But honestly? The way the world is going…I wonder if that’s just because I’m old, or if we really are in a mess.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“I envy a person who is my age who can just leave her life and go on to another.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“Pam was sixty-four years old by then and was not yet a grandmother, which worried her, and her two sons were no longer living in New York, which made her sad. And also her favorite son, the younger one, who lived in San Francisco, was causing her distress of a different kind. Her husband, Ted, had been (honestly) tiresome to her for many years. She still thought of herself as young but understood that she was not. She had a number of friends, many in East Hampton as well, and yet—this had felt rather sudden to her—she could barely stand them. They had become unbelievably insipid. Lydia Robbins was the one Pam considered to be her best friend. Lydia was ten years younger than Pam and had an energy that Pam enjoyed. As they took their walks, Lydia’s full glossy dark hair would fall across her face frequently as she turned to look at Pam, nodding at something Pam had said. But after they shared their confidences, Pam felt she couldn’t bear Lydia. Didn’t anyone ever have anything interesting to say? They talked of movies they were all watching, of series on Netflix, they spoke about their children, but always carefully”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“There was a sense of darkness in the home, even though all the lights were on. —”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“Big difference between being a broken person and being evil. In case you don’t know. And if you don’t think everyone is broken in some way, you’re wrong.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“But you’re right. They are stories of loneliness and love.” Lucy stepped into the tiny kitchen for a moment and returned with a paper towel and she bent down and soaked up the drops of water on the floor left from her boots. Then she picked up her bag and said, “And the small connections we make in this world if we are lucky.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“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.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything