Alice Munro quotes

Moments of kindness and reconciliation are worth having, even if the parting has to come sooner or later. (Alice Munro)
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. View quote
Alice Munro
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. View quote
Alice Munro
You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations. View quote
Alice Munro
Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls... Even when they're being kind... especially when they're being kind. View quote
Alice Munro
In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places. View quote
Alice Munro
Why is it a surprise to find that people other than ourselves are able to tell lies? View quote
Alice Munro
Life would be grand if it weren't for the people. View quote
Alice Munro
Because if she let go of her grief even for a minute it would only hit her harder when she bumped into it again. View quote
Alice Munro
They were all in their early thirties. An age at which it is sometimes hard to admit that what you are living is your life. View quote
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. (Alice Munro)
Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind... When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her. View quote
Alice Munro
We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do-we do it all the time. View quote
Alice Munro
A story is not like a road to follow ... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you. View quote
Alice Munro
Love removes the world for you, and just as surely when it's going well as when it's going badly. View quote
Alice Munro
For we did makeup. But we didn't forgive each other. And we didn't take steps. And it got to be too late and we saw that each of us had invested too much in being in the right and we walked away and it was a relief. View quote
Alice Munro
The images, the language, of pornography, and romance are alike; monotonous and mechanically seductive, quickly leading to despair. View quote
Alice Munro
The constant happiness is curiosity. View quote
Alice Munro
What she wants to do if she can get the time to do it, is not so much to live in the past as to open it up and get one good look at it". View quote
Alice Munro
Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories. View quote
Alice Munro
Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you. (Alice Munro)
Hatred is always a sin, my mother told me. Remember that. One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk. I was struck by that and meant to try it, but knew I shouldn't waste the milk. View quote
Alice Munro
The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming. View quote
Alice Munro
The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple. View quote
Alice Munro
My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information. View quote
Alice Munro