“Oh, I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite....” — Elizabeth Strout Quote

“Oh, I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite. Although sometimes there are sections, sometimes you're just lucky and a paragraph will just kind of come out. And that's great. But that's not ordinary in a day's work.”

“My parents were very, very, very strict.”

“And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats--then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water--seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed.”

“For each person, they live their life and their truth and how it works for them, and that's just kind of how it works for me. I'm not good at doing whatever the other way is - it wouldn't work for me.”

“Before I ever had my record deal, I just had a publishing deal over at Sony ATV. I had that title, 'Flatliner,' and just the idea of a girl stopping everybody's heart - just kind of a fun idea.”

“As you get going in the game you just kind of go along and you play the game.”