Elizabeth Strout

Yes, many, many of the characters do come to me somehow fully formed.

I don't quite understand it, but they do.

And some of these characters I've had to scratch out a little bit more to discover who they are.

But, you know, Dottie and Abel Blaine, they were already there from My Name is Lucy Barton, and now they've grown older.

And so I sort of instinctively understood them.

Hmm.

Well, I'm always, always, always watching people, strangers usually, because I live in New York and there's many, many strangers, but on the subways and the buses and on the sidewalks, I'm just always, always, always watching people

so carefully just just their physical bodies just what they're saying what they're doing as jim burgess says in the burgess boys people are always telling you who they are so you know there is that as well so if you listen carefully and you watch you'll learn an awful lot do you think that elizabeth strout might be a little bit like olive kitteridge herself