Quotes from Alice Munro

The thing is to be happy," he said. "No matter what. Just try that. You can. It gets to be easier and easier. It's nothing to do with circumstances. You wouldn't believe how good it is. Accept everything and then tragedy disappears. Or tragedy lightens, anyway, and you're just there, going along easy in the world." Now, good-bye.

In quel momento la nostra dolcezza reciproca era senza nubi, senza strategie, e i nostri conflitti sembravano irreali. Si era aperto un cancello, molto probabilmente, ma noi non lo varcammo. (La dama spagnola)

un campo que parecía sujeto por olas de hielo de borde azulado.

What wouldn't be worth it? To see her a stranger that he couldn't believe he'd ever been married to, or to see that she could never be a stranger yet was unaccountable removed?

Kay and Beverly were a disappointment to me. They worked hard at Modern Languages, but their conversation and preoccupations seemed hardly different from those of girls who might work in banks or offices.

It was a most insistent place but nobody seemed to be overwhelmed by all the insistence.

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

That was the kind of lie I hope to never have to tell again, the contempt I hoped never to have to show, about the things that really mattered to me. And in order to do that, I would pretty well have to steer clear of people I used to know.

It is for this reason that

I did not think of the story I would make about Alfrida ... but of the work I wanted to do ... The cries of the crowd came to me like big heartbeats, full of sorrows. Lovely formal-sounding waves, with their distant, almost inhuman assent and lamentation ... this was what I thought I had to pay attention to, this was how I wanted my life to be.

That is pretty well what the doctor said, in a lot more careful words. He says that the pills he's got her on will keep her from sinking too low. How low is too low, Roy thinks, and when can you tell?

any store or restaurant or office that he went into. Nor was she married to any of the men he knew in the Elks or the Oddfellows or the Lions Club or the Legion. A

That's something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.

Ecco Dotty, tirata fuori dal mondo reale ed esposta alla luce, sospesa all'interno della splendida gelatina trasparente che Hugo ha passato la vita a imparare a realizzare. Si tratta di un numero di magia, non c'è altro modo per definirlo; si tratta, potremmo anche dire, di un generoso atto d'amore particolare, libero da ogni sentimentalismo. Di un dono felice e meraviglioso. (Materiali)

His philosophy of life had changed as he got older—he believed now in marriage, constancy, and no birth control.

This is his burden- it never occurs to him to call it love.

concentrated

said that I had considered what he was saying, but no. "The thing is to be happy," he said. "No matter what. Just try that. You can. It gets to be easier and easier. It's nothing to do with circumstances. You wouldn't believe how good it is. Accept everything and then tragedy disappears. Or tragedy lightens, anyway, and you're just there, going along easy in the world.

Quello che disapprovava della generazione attuale, ammesso che questo fosse il punto, era che non si potesse fare niente senza esibizionismi. (...) Non si era più capaci di piantarejna carota senza congratularsi dell'impresa.

Mi spiegò che, essendo possibile soffrire solo guardando indietro al proprio passato, oppure avanti, al futuro, lei aveva risolto il problema isolando l'esperienza di ogni istante: ogni singolo istante, disse, era carico di un silenzio assoluto. Ci ho provato, sono disposta a provare di tutto, ma non ho capito come funziona.

Quería saber. No había protección como no fuera en el saber. Quería ver la muerte sujeta y aislada detrás de una pared de hechos y circunstancias particulares, y no flotando libremente alrededor, ignorada pero poderosa, lista para colarse en cualquier parte.

scowling, persistent, repeating my questions. I wanted to know. There is no protection, unless it is in knowing. I wanted death pinned down and isolated behind a wall of particular facts and circumstances, not floating around loose, ignored but powerful, waiting to get in anywhere.

Men had fallen in love with Averill before. Twice she had promised to marry them, then had had to get out of it. She had slept with the ones she was engaged to, and with two or three others. Actually, four others. She had had one abortion. She was not frigid - she did not think so - but there was something about her participation in sex that was polite and appalled, and it was always a relief when they let go of her.

Dorothy," said my mother, shifting gears with an angry little spurt, and we cleared the top of the hill