Elizabeth Strout Quotes

There are lots of procedural shows that I love, but I never really wanted to be a doctor on 'E.R.' - which I'm just picking as an example - or be on a crime procedural.

'Grey's Anatomy' is by far, by a landslide, my favorite show.

I really enjoy 'Mad Men,' but I'm hugely into 'Homeland.' The characters are very well drawn and complex.

The interesting thing about fiction from a writer's standpoint is that the characters come to life within you. And yet who are they and where are they? They seem to have as much or more vitality and complexity as the people around you.

I think that, for physicians who want to become writers, they have the material, the smarts, they have the logic, they know the stories; it's just a matter of being able to connect with their emotional sides - that's the key to writing good fiction.

Most of my stories, if not all of them, have some basis in real life. That's the kind of fiction I'm most interested in. I suppose that's one reason I don't have much respect for fiction that seems to be game playing.

There's only so much you can do with an attorney on a show that's about New York policemen.

'Monday Mornings' is terrific. It's my wife's show. I'm just lucky enough that David Kelley threw me a bone on it as well. It's a wonderful piece based on a novel by Dr. Sanjay Gupta called 'Monday Mornings.'

It's kind of amazing how popular 'Grey's Anatomy' is. What other show can boast such an annoyingly sincere cast of doctors, sniveling through such perfunctory love triangles?

If I knew how to operate a DVR, you'd find episodes of 'The Tavis Smiley Show,' 'Democracy Now!' and lots of stuff from TV Land. What you can find now on my Hulu account are Korean soap operas, 'Grey's Anatomy' and films from the Criterion collection.

ER was one of my favourites. I played a car accident victim who has leukemia. I got to wear a neck brace and nose tubes for the two days I worked.

Remember, I'm a doctor's daughter. So obviously I'm interested in all medical things.

I love long sentences. My big heroes of fiction writing are Henry James and Proust - people who recognise that life doesn't consist of declarative statements, but rather modifications, qualifications and feelings.

On 'Grey's Anatomy,' I didn't have to move too much. I think I ran through the hospital three times.

It wasn't the 'miracle of engineering' that is the human body that was filling me with a mad desire to live my days and nights in a pair of scrubs. The hard truth was I did not remotely want to be a surgeon. I actually just wanted to be on 'Grey's Anatomy.'

I used to watch 'Grey's Anatomy' pretty religiously.

St. Elsewhere was certainly a great show.

Obviously, in marketing, the best tool is to show the autobiography in fiction. It's inevitable how that happens, but it's generic. Say I've written a story where my sister dies. 'Well, did your sister die?' No, she did not. But people use those straws to grasp at the difference between reality and fiction.

To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of American soap operas. I grew up Spanish, so I grew up watching a lot of novellas.

I always loved the verve and vivacity of pulp and I kind of merged it with my own interest in family stories.

My parents are both English. My dad is a plastic surgeon - his name's Norman Waterhouse, but we call him Normy. And my mom's a nurse, which is how they met - in a hospital, over decaying bone.

I loved doing 'Grey's Anatomy.'

I'd never thought about acting as a job. I was an engineer; I was in science and technology. I loved movies and television growing up, but I'd never thought about it as, 'Oh, that guy Denzel Washington is employed as an actor.'

I was in the pilot of ER: I played a 15-year-old pregnant girl they were treating. And then, in the final season, they were casting for interns.

One handy piece of equipment, which I recommend to any writer of fiction, is a set of Myriorama cards. I consult them frequently.