Elizabeth Strout Quotes

I always think that if you look at anyone in detail, you will have empathy for them because you recognize them as a human being, no matter what they've done.

You can't expect everyone to love you. I'm not someone who just wants to throw out hate, just because.

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

Thank you for accepting me as I am, with my virtues and defects.

I don't judge my characters.

My mother is not a model. She is not perfect. That awareness is part of learning to love someone. Predicting the actions of someone is an act of love. We persist, even when we get it wrong. That's the beauty of love.

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

I accept there are people out there who don't like me. I don't like them.

Works of love are always to accept and respect others.

If I could have one wish, it would be for people to look at one another with open hearts and minds. Most of all, to look at each other with compassion. No matter who they are.

No human heart is denied empathy. No religion can demolish that by indoctrination. No culture, no nation and nationalism - nothing can touch it because it is empathy.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don't accept it, it's their loss.

We must take our friends as they are.

We are all trying to make it the best way we know how, so when we look at each other as individuals and nations, we should do so with compassion.

I could never hate anyone I knew.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

We don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.

I define friendship as a bond that transcends all barriers. When you are ready to expect anything and everything from friends, good, bad or ugly... that's what I call true friendship.

You can't tell stories and really walk in someone's shoes and not have a love for them, even if they're doing horrible things.

Well, for one, I don't judge my characters.

I really do believe that no one is too pious to fall or too far gone to be redeemed in some way. Jaime Lannister on 'Game of Thrones' did terrible things, and now I feel so bad for him because his sister won't kiss him. Isn't that weird? Does she not love him? He lost a hand! It kills me that I care.

People who truly love us can be divided into two categories: those who understand us, and those who forgive us our worst sins. Rarely do you find someone capable of both.

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.

Try to love someone who you want to hate, because they are just like you, somewhere inside, in a way you may never expect, in a way that resounds so deeply within you that you cannot believe it.