Lucy by the Sea Quotes

“It is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“Who knows why people are different? We are born with a certain nature, I think. And then the world takes its swings at us.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“We are all in lockdown, all the time. We just don’t know it, that’s all. But we do the best we can. Most of us are just trying to get through.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“And I also understood: Grief is a private thing. God, is it a private thing.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“What is it like to be you? I need to say: This is the question that has made me a writer; always that deep desire to know what it feels like to be a different person.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“...This had often broken my heart, to realize that you never know the last time you pick up a child. Maybe you say "Oh, honey, you're getting too big to be picked up" or something like that. But then you never pick them up again.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“It’s our duty to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“And when I found out that I had been living a parallel life, a dishonest life, it crushed me. But I have often thought that it made me a nicer person, I really do. When you are truly humbled, that can happen. I have come to notice this in life. You can become bigger or bitter, that is what I think. And as a result of that pain, I became bigger. Because I understood then how a woman could not know. It had happened, and it had happened to me.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“Everyone thinks like themselves, this is my point.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“We all live with people -- and places -- and things -- that we have given great weight to. But we are weightless, in the end.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“Everyone has to feel like they matter.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“Everyone needs to feel important.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“I have never seen anything as beautiful as those girls. These women. My daughters!”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“My point is, if we are lucky we bounce into someone. But we always bounce away again, at least a little.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“And then I remembered that one time, when I was pregnant with Chrissy, I had looked down at my big stomach and put my hand over it and thought: Whoever you are, you do not belong to me. My job is to help you get into the world, but you do not belong to me.

And remembering this now, I thought: Lucy, you were absolutely right.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“And William crossed one leg over the other and said, “They’re angry. Their lives have been hard. Look at your sister, Vicky. She’s working a dangerous job right now, because she has to. But she still can’t get ahead.” Then he said, “Lucy, people are in trouble. And those who aren’t in trouble, they just don’t get it. Look how I just didn’t get it—being surprised that this Charlene woman was working in a food pantry. And also, we make the people who are in trouble feel stupid. It’s not good.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“You can become bigger or bitter, this is what I think. And as a result of that pain, I became bigger.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“But I have often thought that it made me a nicer person, I really do. When you are truly humbled, that can happen. I have come to notice this in life. You can become bigger or bitter, this is what I think.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“We are alone in these things that we suffer.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“My childhood had been a lockdown.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“Women grieve, and men replace.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“Who knows why people are different? We are born with a certain nature, I think. And then the world takes its swings at us.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“guess many of us have regrets, he wrote, but my regrets seem to grow as I get older.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“Years ago in New York City I had taught at a community college and there was a man who taught there as well, he was much older than I was, and he retired soon after I got there. He was a nice man, with thick eyebrows, and he was quiet, though he seemed to like me and we would sometimes talk in the hallways. He told me that his wife had Alzheimer’s, and that he could not remember the last word she had spoken to him, because she’d become gradually more and more silent and then she remained silent. And this man, her husband, could never remember the last thing she had said. — And thinking of this now made me think of something I had often thought before: that there had been a last time—when they were little—that I had picked up the girls. This had often broken my heart, to realize that you never know the last time you pick up a child. Maybe you say “Oh, honey, you’re getting too big to be picked up” or something like that. But then you never pick them up again. — And living with this pandemic was like that. You did not know.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“Here is what I did not know that morning in March: I did not know that I would never see my apartment again. I did not know that one of my friends and a family member would die of this virus. I did not know that my relationship with my daughters would change in ways I could never have anticipated. I did not know that my entire life would become something new.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“There was for me during this time a sense of being dazed. As though, in a way, I was not capable of taking in everything that was happening in this world.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“just”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“Because I understood then how a woman could not know. It had happened, and it had happened to me.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“And when I found out I had been living a parallel life, a dishonest life, it crushed me. But I have often thought that it made me a nicer person, I really do. When you are truly humbled, that can happen. I have come to notice this in life. You can become bigger or bitter, this is what I think.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“It was pretty simple when I look back: He just showered me with attention and made me feel very special at a time when I felt not so special.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea