Quotes from Alice Munro

They were tolerant of what most people in town would think of as moral lapses in each other, but quite intolerant of departures in dress and hair style, and people not cutting the crusts off of sandwiches ...

china and her decorating scheme and her flower garden and even on the books in her bookcase. She would live now, not read.

and all that time of care and confusion that seemed as if it would never end seems as if it never was.

I understood what a mysterious and oppressive obligation I had, to be happy, and how I had almost failed it, and would be likely to fail it, every time, and she would not know.

There was still that strange hesitation and lightness about her, as if she were waiting for life to begin.

Acts done without faith may restore faith.

Demasiada felicidad

Life has a lot of surprises up its sleeve . . . I just mean there's more than one way to love God, and taking pleasure in the world is surely one of them. That's a revelation that's come on me rather late. Too late to be of any use to your mother . . . No. Guilt is a sin and a seduction. I've said that to many a poor soul that liked to wallow in it. Regret's another matter. How could you get through a long life and escape it?

What made you wanted was nothing you did, it was something that you had, and how could you ever tell whether you had it?

Isn't it true that all the people I know in the world so far are hardly more than puppets for me, serving the glossy contrivings of my imagination?

Tämän kirjeen kirjoittaminen on kuin panisi viestin pulloon - ja toivoisi sen päätyvän Japaniin.

Ja vaikka he edelleen esiintyivät minun ei kovin eroottisissa kuvitelmissani, he olivat jo poissa. Jotkut heistä, monet heistä, lopullisesti poissa.

I was thinking myself about changing into a different sort of person from the one I am. I do think about that. I read a book called The Art of Loving. A lot of things seemed clear while I was reading it but afterwards I went back to being more or less the same.

Patrick had a trick-no, it was not a trick, Patrick had no tricks - Patrick had a way of expressing surprise, fairly scornful surprise, when people did not know something he knew, and similar scorn, similar surprise, whenever they had bothered to know something he did not. His arrogance and humility were both oddly exaggerated.

Yet those few hours filled her with an assurance that the life she was going back to, which seemed so makeshift and unsatisfactory, was only temporary and could easily be put up with.

verdad, joven, si usted no lo sabe, no debería tener un trabajo de tanta responsabilidad.

Cuando estás fatal es cuando intentan pillarte.

for me to say." He smiled; he shook his head. "I don't

Every one of us will be forgotten, Sophia thought but did not say, because of the tender sensibilities of men—particularly of a young man—on this point.

Row, row, row your boat. Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements.

I think, when you are growing up, you have to pull apart from what your mother wants or needs. You've got to go your own way, and that's what I did.

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.

I never start out with any kind of connecting theme or plan. Everything just falls the way it falls. I don't ever think about what kind of fiction I write or what I am writing about or what I am trying to write about. When I'm writing, what I do is I think about a story that I want to tell.