350 Quotes by Alice Munro

Usually, I have a lot of acquaintance with the story before I start writing it. When I didn't have regular time to give to writing, stories would just be working in my head for so long that when I started to write I was deep into them. Now, I do that work by filling notebooks.

I want my stories to move people ... to feel some kind of reward from the writing.

For years and years I thought that stories were just practice, till I got time to write a novel,

A story ... has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.

The unhappiest moment I could never tell you. All our fights blend into each other and are in fact re-enactments of the same fight, in which we punish each other--I with words, Hugh with silence--for being each other. We never needed any more than that.

There would never be any room in her for anything else. No room for anything but the realization of what she had done.

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls... Even when they're being kind... especially when they're being kind.

The story fails but your faith in the importance of doing the story doesn't fail.