Elizabeth Strout

Oh, they do all the time.

Oh, yeah.

If I wasn't surprised, you wouldn't be surprised.

I guess so.

I mean, I didn't think of that, but thank you.

I mean, I guess, I mean, I don't know.

I just did it.

But they do seem to go to their fates.

As Artie says himself toward the end of the book, he realizes something's happening to me and I will just go to my fate, which is a way of saying that

You know, he didn't have as much free will as he thought maybe.

Well, I was writing a book at that time.

I was literally writing it in real time.

You know, when I first wrote Amy and Isabel, I realized literature is about place and about time in history.

And if you have a place and a time in history and you throw in a character, then you're going to have a story.

I realized this is Artie's time in history.

And because he's a history teacher, it's even going to mean more to him than it might another person on the street.

So that is what I was doing.

I think that was a thought that I had during one of the debates.

I remember thinking, oh, wow.

this is so fascinating because I, I mean, even in a Lucy Barton book, I had mentioned how people crave authority and I've understood that as a writer, like to, to write something, you must write with authority.