Quotes from Alice Munro

She hated to hear the word "escape" used about fiction. She might have argued, not just playfully, that it was real life that was the escape. But this was too important to argue about.

I don't take up the story and follow it as if it were a road, taking me somewhere... I go into it, and move back and forth and settle here and there, and stay in it for a while. It is more like a house.

One's appreciation of meager comforts, it seems, depends on what misery one has gone through before getting them.

She hadn't been just a once-through reader either. Brothers Karamazov, Mill on the Floss, Wings of the Dove, Magic Mountain, over and over again. She would pick one up, thinking that she would just read that special bit -and find herself unable to stop until the whole thing was redigested

She was a woman I would recognize now as a likely sufferer from varicose veins, hemorrhoids, a dropped womb, cysted ovaries, inflammations, discharges, lumps and stones in various places, one of those heavy, cautiously moving, wrecked survivors of the female life, with stories to tell.

I thought you were on the stairs," she said. Greta covered her with the blanket in their berth, and it was then that she herself began to shake, as if she had a fever. She felt sick, and actually tasted vomit in her throat. Katy said, "Don't push me," and squirmed away. "You smell a bad smell," she said. Greta took her arms away and lay on her back.

That was like a hand clapped against Rose's chest, not to hurt, but astonish her, to take her breath away .

Learning to survive, no matter with what cravenness and caution, what shocks and forebodings, is not the same as being miserable. It is too interesting.

El invierno cae con dureza sobre el campo, se asienta en él como la capa de hielo de tres metros de profundidad hace miles de años. La gente vive envuelta en el invierno de un modo que los extraños no comprenden. Mantienen una actitud precavida, previsora, tranquila, animosa.

Eu disse que a única coisa que me incomodava, um pouco, era o fato de haver uma pressuposição de que nada mais ia acontecer na nossa vida. Nada importante para nós, nada que precisasse ainda ser resolvido.

Mentira nenhuma, afinal, era mais violenta que as mentiras que nós contamos a nós mesmos e aí desgraçadamente temos que continuar contando para segurar aquele vômito todo no estômago, comendo a gente por dentro.

Marriage forces him to live with more ornament as well as sentiment, as it protects him, also, from the extremities of his own nature - from a frigid parsimony or a luxuriant sloth, from squalor, and from excessive sleeping, drinking, smoking, or freethinking.

Su voz daba a entender que era posible hacer cualquier cosa, cualquiera, y quitarle importancia diciendo que era una broma, una broma a costa de toda la gente solemne y culpable, toda la gente moral y emotiva del mundo, la gente que «se tomaba a sí misma en serio». Eso era lo que él no podía soportar de los demás.

A gente pensa umas coisas que preferia não pensar. Acontece na vida.

She doesn't mistake that for reality, and neither does she mistake anything else for reality, and this is how she knows that she is sane. Meneseteung

Lovers. Not a soft word, as people thought, but cruel and tearing.

even if she's faking, it shows she wants to feel something, doesn't it, oughtn't decent people to help her?

There was a discouraging lack of formality, or any sort of organization, to this place.

Irlma doesn't care for the sight of people reading because it is not sociable and at the end of it all what has been accomplished? She thinks people are better off playing cards, or making things.

What if people really did that--sent their love through the mail to get rid of it? What would it be that they sent? A box of chocolates with centers like the yolks of turkeys' eggs. A mud doll with hollow eye sockets. A heap of roses slightly more fragrant than rotten. A package wrapped in bloody newspaper that nobody would want to open.)

There's the intelligent sort of love that makes an intelligent choice. That's the kind you're supposed to get married on. Then there's the kind that's anything but intelligent, that's like a possession. And that's the one everybody really values." (Hard-Luck Stories)

The moon came up through the black trees on top of the rocks, and looked so huge, so solemn and thrilling, that there were cries of amazement. What's that? And even when it had climbed higher in the sky and shrunk to a more normal size people acknowledged it from time to time, saying 'the harvest moon' or 'did you see it when it first came up?

Pa dobro. Bilo bi isto da se opet sretnemo. Ili ?ak i da se ne sretnemo. Ljubav koja se ne može iskoristiti, ljubav koja zna svoje mesto. (Neki bi rekli, ljubav koja nije realna, jer se nikada ne bi izložila opasnosti da joj zavrnu šiju, da o njoj pri?aju neslane viceve, niti da se tužno istroši). Ljubav koja ništa ne rizikuje, a ipak živi, kap po kap, kao podzemna žila. S težinom ove nove tišine, s takvim pe?atom.

Everyone was wrong. She was not timid or acquiescent or natural or pure. When you died, of course, these wrong opinions were all there was left.