Elizabeth Strout

North Carolina · connectedBorn 1956

American novelist (born 1956)

Worked at Queens University of Charlotte

novelist, writer

Quotations with a citation

There’s a part of me in every character I write, whether it’s male or female, because everything has to go through me. Everything I’ve observed or heard or whatever—it all has to go through me. I’m the one who makes these people up, and so there’s a part of me in some form in all of these people, but I really have made them up. But they’re so real to me, you know? By the time I’m done with them on the page, they’re very, very real to me. They’re just as real to me as anybody that I’ve ever met.

Success did come to me later, but that was okay, I could feel myself getting better with each story or book. Age does matter to me — but that doesn’t mean it has to matter to all writers. It matters to me because as I age my work gets better, but more importantly, I live through more things and see more things, and therefore have more things to say.

I’ve always been fascinated with this sense that every single person walking down the street has a whole story. It’s so interesting to think about the vast variety of things that can take place within one person’s life, and how nobody ever really knows it, because we only tell parts of our story to different people, and oh, I just want to know it so much! I always have, so I make it up.

In the libraries

Open Library Abide with me · 2005 View library record ↗ Open Library Amy and Isabelle · 1998 View library record ↗ Open Library Anything is possible · 2017 View library record ↗ Open Library My Name is Lucy Barton · 2016 View library record ↗ Open Library Olive Kitteridge · 2007 View library record ↗ Open Library The Burgess Boys · 2013 View library record ↗

Read Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge 2007 Find a copy Amy and Isabelle 1998 Find a copy The Burgess Boys 2013 Find a copy My Name is Lucy Barton 2016 Find a copy Anything is possible 2017 Find a copy Abide with me 2005 Find a copy