350 Quotes by Alice Munro

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

My mother had not let anything go. Inside that self we knew, which might at times appear blurred a bit, or sidetracked, she kept her younger selves strenuous and hopeful; scenes from the past were liable to pop up any time, like lantern slides, against the cluttered fabric of the present.

But when she was finished running away, when she just went on, what would she put in his place?

There ought to be one place you thought about and knew about and maybe longed for – but never did get to see.

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.

The relatives didn’t feel slighted – they had a limited interest in people like Roy who had just married into the family, and not even contributed any children to it, and who were not like themselves. They were large, expansive, talkative. He was short, compact, quiet.

And so it often happened with those practical people. In spite of their calculations, their survival instincts, they might not get as far as they had quite reasonable expected.

This is the way you look at the poorest details of the world resurfaced, after you’ve been driving for a long time – you feel their singleness and precise location and the forlorn coincidence of you being there to see them.

I am a woman of violent contradiction.