Oh William! Quotes

“A friend had said to me once, “Whenever I don’t know what to do, I watch what I am doing.” And what I was doing that year was leaving, even though I had not yet left.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“I am not invisible no matter how deeply I feel that I am.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Grief is such a—oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“But when I think Oh William!, don’t I mean Oh Lucy! too? Don’t I mean Oh Everyone, Oh dear Everybody in this whole wide world, we do not know anybody, not even ourselves! — Except a little tiny, tiny bit we do. — But we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean. — This may be the only thing in the world I know to be true.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“People are lonely, is my point here. Many people can’t say to those they know well what it is they feel they might want to say.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“But we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean.

This may be the only thing in this world I know to be true.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Once every so often—at the very most—I think someone actually chooses something. Otherwise we’re following something—we don’t even know what it is but we follow it,”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Lucy, I married you because you were filled with joy. You were just filled with joy. And when I finally realized what you came from—when we went to your house that day to meet your family and tell them we were getting married, Lucy, I almost died at what you came from. I had no idea that was what you came from. And I kept thinking, But how is she what she is? How could she come from this and have so much exuberance?” He shook his head very slowly. “And I still don’t know how you did it. You’re unique, Lucy. You’re a spirit. You know how the other day at that barracks when you thought you were flipping between universes or something, well, I believe you, Lucy, because you are a spirit. There has never been anyone in the world like you.” In a moment he added, “You steal people’s hearts, Lucy.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“To deny my husband any chance of comforting me—oh, it was an unspeakably awful thing. And I had not known. This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Watching her, I felt she was telling the truth. There was something about her that seemed deeply—almost fundamentally—comfortable inside herself, the way I think a person is when they have been loved by their parents.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“thought to myself: William is the only person I ever felt safe with. He is the only home I ever had.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Whenever I don’t know what to do, I watch what I am doing.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“I would give it all up, all the success I have had as a writer, all of it I would give up—in a heartbeat I would give it up—for a family that was together and children who knew they were dearly loved by both their parents who had stayed together and who loved each other too.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“This authority was why I had fallen in love with William. We crave authority. We do. No matter what anyone says, we crave that sense of authority. Of believing that in the presence of this person we are safe.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Mommy, I cried inside myself, Mommy, I am so frightened! And the nice mother I have made up over the years answered: Yes, I know.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“As we drove I suddenly had a visceral memory of what a hideous thing marriage was for me at times those years with William: a familiarity so dense it filled up the room, your throat almost clogged with knowledge of the other so that it seemed to practically press into your nostrils—the odor of the other’s thoughts, the self-consciousness of every spoken word, the slight flicker of an eyebrow slightly raised, the barely perceptible tilting of the chin; no one but the other would know what it meant; but you could not be free living like that, not ever. Intimacy became a ghastly thing.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“oh, I can’t really explain what I thought! But it was very strange to think that the children I had were already—in just one generation—so different, so very different, from me and what I had come from.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“There was something about her that seemed deeply—almost fundamentally—comfortable inside herself, the way I think a person is when they have been loved by their parents.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Walking down the sidewalk I thought how my mother had never said I love you to me, and I thought how Chrissy had been going to call the baby Lucy. She loved me, my daughter! Even knowing this, I was surprised. In truth, I was amazed.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“So often I had the private image of William and me as Hansel and Gretel. Two small kids lost in the woods, looking for the breadcrumbs that could lead us home. ... Being with Hansel, even if we were lost in the woods, made me feel safe.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“I thought as I walked back to the airport—I thought: I know what that man feels like. (Except of course I do not.) But I thought: It’s odd, because on one hand I think I am invisible, but on the other I know what it is like to be marked as separate from society, only in my case no one knows it when they see me. But I thought that about that fat man. And about myself.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“My brother and my sister, I see it more and more clearly, as murky as it still is, these lives are not the lives of people who came fully from love from the moment they were born. —”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“times in our marriage I loathed him. I saw, with a kind of dull disc of dread in my chest, that with his pleasant distance, his mild expressions, he was unavailable. But worse. Because beneath his height of pleasantness there lurked a juvenile crabbiness, a scowl that flickered across his soul, a pudgy little boy with his lower lip thrust forward who blamed this person and that person—he blamed me, I felt this often; he was blaming me for something that had nothing to do with our present lives, and he blamed me even as he called me “Sweetheart,” making my coffee—back then he never drank coffee but he made me a cup each morning—setting it down before me martyr-like.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“So it wasn’t me that made him do this, if he did this while married to Joanne and also to Estelle? Then it wasn’t because of me? I could not believe this. And I thought about what he had said the night before about choice. He may not have had any choice about this part of him. How do I know?”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“deprivations never leave us.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Please try to understand this: I have always thought that if there was a big corkboard and on that board was a pin for every person who ever lived, there would be no pin for me.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“I would sometimes sit in our small bedroom and weep with a kind of horrendous inner pain, and William would come to me and say, “Lucy, talk to me, what is it?” And I would just shake my head until he went away. What a really awful thing I had done. I had not thought of this until now. To deny my husband any chance of comforting me—oh, it was an unspeakably awful thing. And I had not known. This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Is he going to be okay?” I said he would most certainly be okay. I emphasized this, because I did not know myself—except what choice did he have, what choice do most of us have, except to be okay?”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“At times in our marriage I loathed him. I saw, with a kind of dull disc of dread in my chest, that with his pleasant distance, his mild expressions, he was unavailable. But worse. Because beneath his height of pleasantness there lurked a juvenile crabbiness, a scowl that flickered across his soul, a pudgy little boy with his lower lip thrust forward who blamed this person and that person—he blamed me, I felt this often; he was blaming me for something that had nothing to do with our present lives, and he blamed me even as he called me “Sweetheart,” making my coffee—back then he never drank coffee but he made me a cup each morning—setting it down before me martyr-like.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!