"They don't need to be invited, they can just come." [...] "Olive, sometimes people like to be invited. I, for example, would have loved to be invited to your house on many occasions, but you've not invited me except for that one time when I asked you to take me over. And so I have felt rebuffed. Do you see that?"

Olive exhaled loudly. "You could have called."

"Olive, I just told you I did call. I called you a couple of times, and because you turned off your friggin' answering machine, you didn't know I called." [...] "Only pointing out here that people can't read your mind.

Elizabeth Strout – Olive, Again (2019)
Penguin Random House UK (2019)

She thought: This is the stupidest thing I have ever done. And then she thought: It's no stupider than that stupid baby shower I went to [...]  " Jack?" she called to him.

"Yes, Olive?" he called back.

"This is the stupidest thing I've ever done." She didn't know why she had said that.

"The stupidest thing you ever did was go to that baby shower," he called back, and Olive felt stunned for a moment.

Elizabeth Strout – Olive, Again (2019)
Penguin Random House UK (2019)

The truth is that Olive did not understand why age had brought with it a kind of hard-heartdness toward her husband. But it was something she had seemed unable to help, as though the stone wall that had rambled along between them during the course of their long marriage - a stone wall that separated them but also provided unexpected dips of moss-covered warm spots where sunshine would flicker between them in a sudden laugh of understanding  - had become tall and unyielding, and not providing flowers in its crannies but some ice storm frozen along it instead. In other words, something had come between them that seemed insurmountable. She could, on certain days, point out to herself the addition of a boulder here, a pile of rocks there [...] but she still did not understand why they should walk into old age with this high and horrible wall between them. And it was her fault. Because as her heart become more constricted, Henry's heart became needier, and when he walked up behind her in the house sometimes to slip his arms around her, it was all she could do to not visibly shudder. Stop!, she wanted to shout. (But why? What crime had he been committing, except to ask her love?)

Elizabeth Strout – Olive, Again (2019)
Penguin Random House UK (2019)

"Olive, how is Christopher?"

Olive said, "His new baby died. Heartbeat stopped a few days before it was due. Ann had to push it out dead."

"Olive!" Marlene's pretty eyes filled with tears.

"No reason to cry about it," Olive said. (Olive had cried. She had cried like a newborn baby when she hung up the phone from Christopher after he told her.)

Elizabeth Strout – Olive, Again (2019)
Penguin Random House UK (2019)

She could not stop thinking how stupid that baby shower had been. All women. Why only women at a baby shower? Did men have nothing to do with this business of babies? Olive thought she didn't like women.

She liked men.

She had always liked men.

Elizabeth Strout – Olive, Again (2019)
Penguin Random House UK (2019)

FOTO: AMEER AL-HALBI/AFP

And so after a while she had sat up and he had said, "Stay, Olive." But she did not stay. "Call me," he said. "I would like it if you called me." She had not called. He could call her if he wanted to. And he had not called [...] He had sent one email with a bunch of question marks in the subject line and nothing more. That was an email? Olive didn't think so.

Elizabeth Strout – Olive, Again (2019)
Penguin Random House UK (2019)

he kept thinking of his wife, Betsy, and he wanted to howl. He understood only this: that he deserved all of it. He deserved the fact that right now he wore a pad in his underwear because of prostate surgery, he deserved it; he deserved his daughter not wanting to speak to him because for years he had not wanted to speak to her - she was gay; she was a gay woman, and this still made a small wave of uneasiness move through him. Betsy, though, did not deserve to be dead. He deserved to be dead, but Betsy did not deserve that status [...] 

When his wife was dying, she was the one who was furious. She said, "I hate you." And he said, " I don't blame you." She said, "Oh, stop it." But he had meant it - how could he blame her? He could not blame her. And the last thing she said to him was: "I hate you because I'm going to die and you're going to live."

As he glanced up a seagull, he thought, But I'm not living, Betsy. What a terrible joke it has been. 

Elizabeth Strout – Olive, Again (2019)
Penguin Random House UK (2019)

"Listen, Cassie," Jack said, "I just wanted to say I know I'm a shit. I know that. Just so you know. I know that I'm a shit.

[...] "What am I supposed to say?"

"Nothing," he answered agreeably. "Nothing to say to that. But I just wanted you to know I know."

Elizabeth Strout – Olive, Again (2019)
Penguin Random House UK (2019)

There were people on the sidewalks, many were young people with kids or strollers, and they all seemed to be talking to one another. This fact impressed him. How easily they took this for granted, to be with one another, to be talking! 

Elizabeth Strout – Olive, Again (2019)
Penguin Random House UK (2019)