Amy and Isabelle Quotes

“But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“The evenings grew longer; kitchen windows stayed open after dinner and peepers could be heard in the marsh. Isabelle, stepping out to sweep her porch steps, felt absolutely certain that some wonderful change was arriving in her life. The strength of this belief was puzzling; what she was feeling, she decided, was really the presence of God.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“Awful to think she was a disapproving mother. Awful to wonder-had she always frightened Amy? Is that why the girl had grown up so fearful, always ducking her head? It was bewildering to Isablle. Bewildering that you could harm a child without even knowing, thinking all the while you were being careful, conscientious. But it was a terrible feeling. More terrible than having Avery Clark forget to come to her house. Knowing that her child had grown up frightened. Except it was cockeyed, all backwards, because, thought Isabelle, glancing back at her daughter, I've been frightened of you.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“If she were Catholic, she could kneel, kneel and bow her head inside a church with brilliant stained-glass windows and streaks of golden light falling over her. Yes, oh yes, she would kneel and stretch out her arms, holding to her Amy and Dottie and Bev.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“An ache stayed inside her. And a faint reverberating hum of something close to joy lived on the outer edges of her memory, some kind of longing that had been answered once and was simply not answered anymore.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“To be watched made her uneasy, as though she had to compete with every other person he might gaze upon, and she had known for quite some time that competing was not what she did best. Even as a child this had been true; the game of musical chairs had filled her with panic — that dreadful, icy knowledge that when the music stopped someone would be out. It was better when she stopped trying, because there were so many things a young person was required to endure: spelling bees, endless games in gym class; in all these things she had stopped trying, or if she tried, she did so with little expectation of herself, so was not disappointed to misspell “glacier” in a fourth-grade spelling bee, or to strike out in softball because she never swung the bat. It became a habit, not trying, and in junior high, when the biggest prize of course was to be popular among the right friends, Amy found she lacked the fortitude once more to get in there and swing. Arriving at the point where she felt almost invisible, she was aware that her solitude was something she might have brought upon herself. But here was Mr. Robertson and she was not invisible to him. Not when he looked at her like that—she couldn't be. (Still, there was her inner tendency to flee, the recrudescence of self-doubt.) But his hand came forward and touched her elbow.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“By the time they were pulling into the parking lot of the A&P, the mood was fading, the moment gone. Amy could feel it go. Perhaps it was nothing more than the two doughnuts expanding in her stomach full of milk, but Amy felt a heaviness begin, a familiar turning of some inward tide. As they drove over the bridge the sun seemed to move from a cheerful daytime yellow to an early-evening gold; painful how the gold light hit the riverbanks, rich and sorrowful, drawing from Amy some longing, a craving for joy.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“Isabelle's moods began to vary with alarming speed. She wondered if she had always been this way and simply failed to notice. No. Good heavens, you noticed something like this: driving to the A&P feeling collected and cozy, as though your clothes fit around you exactly right, and by the time you drove home feeling completely undone, because as you walked across the parking lot the smell of the grocery bag you held in your arms mingled with the smell of spring and produced some scrape of longing in your heart. Frankly, it was exhausting. Because for all those moments of hope that God was near, of some bursting, some widening seeming to take place in her heart, Isabelle had other moments that could only be described as rage. (117)”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“Amy because the girl had been enjoying the sexual pleasures of a man, while she herself had not.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“All the love in the world couldn’t prevent the awful truth: You passed on who you were.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“Bewildering that you could harm a child without even knowing, thinking all the while you were being careful, conscientious.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“within themselves the ability to be kind, really, was the work of God.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“Hennecock, half an hour away. In the drugstore, with her arm around a huddling Amy, Isabelle had looked into the kind eyes of a tired pharmacist and said, “My daughter has suffered a bit of a shock,” and the pharmacist only nodded, his bearing exuding the suspension of all judgment, and in four years’ time, when Isabelle was to meet him again, she would have no memory of him (though he would remember her, would remember the touching femininity of this small woman whose arm was tightly around her tall, frightened girl); for Isabelle tonight the world was shapeless and whirling.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“Bewildering that you could harm a child without even knowing, thinking all the while you were being careful, conscientious. But it was a terrible feeling. More terrible than having”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“It was the air, really—the clear brightness of the air that in the evenings now held the first chilliness of autumn, and brought with it that subtle undercurrent of old longings and new chances which autumn often brings.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“but there was some—well, “eagerness” was too strong a word—but some desire to bathe and dress and leave the house, as though another place waited where she belonged.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“Isabelle, at different places and moments in the years to come, would sometimes be surrounded by silence and find in herself only the repeated word “Amy.” “Amy, Amy”—for this was it, her heart’s call, her prayer. “Amy,” she would think, “Amy,” remembering this day’s chilly, golden air.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“What we do matters is a thought Isabelle had again and again, as though just now, well into adult years, she was figuring this out.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“Awful to think she was a disapproving mother. Awful to wonder—had she always frightened Amy? Is that why the girl had grown up so fearful, always ducking her head? It was bewildering to Isabelle. Bewildering that you could harm a child without even knowing, thinking all the while you were being careful, conscientious. But it was a terrible feeling.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“What she felt, turning into the driveway, was a fury and pain so deep that she would never have believed a person could feel it and still remain alive.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“Rosie Tanguay could take the studies and shove them right up her skinny behind. Bev knew why she smoked. She smoked for the same reason she ate: it gave her something to look forward to. It was as simple as that.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“after school and discovered Julie LaGuinn standing at the blackboard.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“pewter vase with one yellow”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“But an ache stayed inside her. And a faint reverberating hum of something close to joy lived on the outer edges of her memory, some kind of longing that had been answered once and was simply not answered anymore.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“Through the trees there was a motion, a person walking on the road. Isabelle watched as the girl - it was Amy - moving slowly and with her head down, came up the gravel driveway. The sight of her pained Isabelle. It pained her terribly to see her, but why?
Because she looked unhappy, her shoulders slumped like that, her neck thrust forward, walking slowly, just about dragging her feet. This was Isabelle's daughter; this was Isabelle's fault. She hadn't done it right, being a mother, and this youthful desolation walking up the driveway was exactly proof of that. But then Amy straightened up, glancing toward the house with a wary squint, and she seemed transformed to Isabelle, suddenly a presence to be reckoned with. Her limbs were long and even, her breasts beneath her T-shirt seemed round and right, neither large or small, only part of some pleasing symmetry; her face looked intelligent and shrewd. Isabelle, sitting motionless in her chair, felt intimidated.
And angry. The anger arrived in one quick thrust. It was the sight of her daughter's body that angered her. It was not the girl's unpleasantness, or even the fact that she had been lying to Isabelle for so many months, nor did Isabelle hate Amy for taken up all the space in her life. She hated Amy because the girl had been enjoying the sexual pleasures of a man, while she herself had not.”
― Elizabeth Strout , Amy and Isabelle

“Spense la sigaretta nel portacenere. Non si sarebbe messa a lamentarsi, non era più una bambina. Ma le restava dentro un dolore. E un suono continuo e sommesso, il debole riverbero qualcosa di simile alla gioia, continuava a vivere ai margini della sua memoria, una qualche specie di desiderio che un tempo aveva trovato risposta e ora, semplicemente, non più.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

“But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable. Dottie,”
― Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle