"As Dottie thought about this, going back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room, she saw Shelly Small as a woman who suffered only from the most common complaint of all: Life simply had not been what she thought it would be. Shelly had taken life's disappointments and turned them into a house. A house the, with the clever use of the right architects, had managed to stay within the legal code yet became a monstrosity as large as Shelly's needs . . . but it had not been enough. What Dottie had not said to her, because it was not her place, was that Shelly had a husband who would break into song at the breakfast table with her in a room full of strangers sitting nearby, and that was no- excuse me, Dottie though - small thing."
"Both of them laughed until they had tears in their eyes, and even then they kept on laughing. But Mary thought: Not one thing lasts forever; still, may Angelina have this moment for the rest of her life."
- Anything Is Possible, Elizabeth Strout
