“The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don't think about it at all.
The thing that was your bright treasure. You don't think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.
This is what happens.
...
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, quote from Runaway
“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, quote from Runaway
“She could not explain or quite understand that it wasn't altogether jealousy she felt, it was rage. And not because she couldn't shop like that or dress like that. It was because that was what girls were supposed to be like. That was what men - people, everybody - thought they should be like. Beautiful, treasured, spoiled, selfish, pea-brained. That was what a girl should be, to be fallen in love with. Then she would become a mother and she'd be all mushily devoted to her babies. Not selfish anymore, but just as pea-brained. Forever.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“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".”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“She keeps on hoping from a word from Penelope, but not in any strenuous way. She hopes as people who know better hope for undeserved blessings, spontaneous remissions, things of that sort.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“As a matter of fact she does not know to this day if those words were spoken, or if he only caught her, wound his arms around her, held her so tightly, with such continual, changing pressures that it seemed more than two arms were needed, that she was surrounded by him, his body strong and light, demanding and renouncing all at once, as if he was telling her she was wrong to give up on him, everything was possible, but then again that she was not wrong, he meant to stamp himself on her and go."
"Passion”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“....Lived in curious but not unhappy isolation…subscribing to magazines nobody around them read, listening to programs on the national radio network which nobody around them listened to…”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“A certain kind of seriousness in a girl could cancel out looks”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“يكي دوبار كارلا يكدفعه شروع كرده بود به حرف زدن و كار خيلي احمقانه اي كرده بود، فقط براي آنكه فضا را عوض كند. از آن كارهايي كه كه وقتي سواركارهاي دست و پاچلفتي و وحشتزده تازه كار احساس حقارت مي كردند، از او سر مي زد.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“When two human beings divided by hostility are both, at the same time, mystified—no, frightened—by the same apparition, there is a bond that springs up between them, and they find themselves united in the most unexpected way. United in their humanity—that is the only way I can describe it. We parted almost as friends.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“I have been incredibly lucky," he said. "Lucky in my life. Oh, I know some people would not say so. They'd say I hadn't stuck with anything, or that I hadn't made any money. They'd say I wasted that time when I was down-and-out. But that's not true.
"I heard the call," he said, raising his eyebrows, half smiling at himself. "Seriously. I did. I heard the call to get out of the box. Out of the got-to-do-something-big box. Out of the ego box.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang on to it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“انگار یک جایی توی ریه های کارلا سوزن
مرگباری بود، و اگر با احتیاط نفس می کشید, شاید آن را حس نمی کرد. ولی هر از گاه باید نفس عمیق می کشید، و سوزن هنوز همان جا بود.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“She could not picture it. Herself riding on the subway or streetcar, caring for new horses, talking to new people, living among hordes of people every day who were not Clark.
A life, a place, chosen for that specific reason––that it would not contain Clark.
The strange and terrible thing coming clear to her about that world of the future, as she now pictured it, was that she would not exist there. She would only walk around, and open her mouth and speak, and do this and do that. She would not really be there. And what was strange about it was that she was doing all this, she was riding on this bus in the hope of recovering herself. As Mrs. Jamieson might say––and as she herself might with satisfaction have said––taking charge of her own life. With nobody glowering over her, nobody's mood infecting her with misery.
But what would she care about? How would she know that she was alive?
While she was running away from him––now––Clark still kept his place in her life. But when she was finished running away, when she just went on, what would she put in his place? What else––who else––could ever be so vivid a challenge?”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“گريس نمي توانست توضيح بدهد يا درست بفهمد كه آنچه احساس مي كرد دو هم رفته حسادت نبود، خشم بود٠ دليلش هم اين نبود كه نمي توانست آن طوري خريد كند يا لباس بپوشد٠ اين بود كه از دخترها توقع داشتند اين جوري باشند٠ مردها، مردم، همه آدم ها، فكر مي كردند دختر بايد اين جوري باشد٠ خوشگل، عزيزدردانه، ننر، خودخواه، با مغزي به اندازه نخود٠ دختر بايد اين جوري باشد تا بشود عاشقش شد. بعد مادر مي شد و خودش را با سوز و گداز وقف بچه هايش مي كرد٠ ديگر خودخواه نبود، فقط مغزش همچنان به قد نخود بود٠ تا ابد٠”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“But when she was finished running away, when she just went on, what would she put in his place?”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“...they lived in a curious but not unhappy isolation, though her father was a popular schoolteacher. Partly they were cut off by Sara’s heart trouble, but also by their subscribing to magazines nobody around them read, listening to programs on the national radio network, which nobody around them listened to. By Sara’s making her own clothes—sometimes ineptly— from Vogue patterns, instead of Butterick. Even by the way they preserved some impression of youth instead of thickening and slouching like the parents of Juliet’s schoolfellows.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“Getting and spending we lay waste our powers. Why do we let ourselves be so busy and miss doing things we should have, or would have, liked to do? Remember”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“Odd choices were simply easier for men, most of whom would find women glad to marry them. Not so the other way around.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“I think that this is minor. Things will happen in your life—things will probably happen in your life—that will make this seem minor. Other things you’ll be able to feel guilty about.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“He described to her the house he had built for himself, in outside appearance a shack, but delightful inside, at least to him. A sleeping loft with a little round window. Everything he needed right where he could put his hand to it, out in the open, nothing in cupboards. A short walk from the house he had a bathtub sunk in the earth, in the middle of a bed of sweet herbs. He would carry hot water to it by the pailful and lounge there under the stars, even in the winter. He grew vegetables, and shared them with the deer.
(From the story "Powers")”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“گريس خودش نمي دانست چقدر سرد است، فكر مي كرد اشتياقي كه نشان مي دهد بايد منجر به لذت هايي شود كه، در خلوت و خيال، با آنها آشنا بود، و احساس مي كرد از آن به بعدش را موري بايد به عهده بگيرد. كه نمي گرفت.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang on to it. You must not let yourself be waylaid and have it taken from you.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“براي همين حالا دارم راه و روشم را عوض مي كنم و دستكم فعلا خداحافظ دفتر خاطرات. هميشه احساس مي كردم ماجراي واقعاعجيب و غريب در زندگي ام اتفاق مي افتد، و خيلي مهم است كه همه چيز را ثبت كرده باشم. يعني اين فقط يك احساس بود؟”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“They were a pair of people with no middle ground, nothing between polite formalities and an engulfing intimacy”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“The thing about life, Harry had told Lauren, was to live in the world with interest. To keep your eyes open and see the possibilities - see the humanity - in everybody you met. To be aware. If he had anything at all to teach her it was that. Be aware.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“هری به لارن گفته بود در زندگی مهم این است که حواست جمع باشد. چشم هایت را باز کنی و امکانات بالقوه را-انسانیت را- در هر کسی ببینی. توجه کنی. اگر می توانست چیزی به لارن یاد بدهد، همین بود. توجه کردن.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“The thing that was your bright treasure. You don’t think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
Alice Munro
Born place: in Wingham, Ontario, Canada
Born date July 10, 1931
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“Deacon was good, too-almost as good as me. His charisma draws people in, even if it's only a facade.”
― Suzanne Young, quote from The Remedy
“I’m sorry that I am back and forth, push and pull
instead of effortless simplicity.”
― Trista Mateer, quote from The Dogs I Have Kissed
“No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays of Montaigne
“We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort—other people’s validation, recognition, rewards. So what are we going to do? Not be kind, not work hard, not produce, because there is a chance it wouldn’t be reciprocated? C’mon. Think of all the activists who will find that they can only advance their cause so far. The leaders who are assassinated before their work is done. The inventors whose ideas languish “ahead of their time.” According to society’s main metrics, these people were not rewarded for their work. Should they have not done it? Yet in ego, every one of us has considered doing precisely that. If that is your attitude, how do you intend to endure tough times? What if you’re ahead of the times? What if the market favors some bogus trend? What if your boss or your clients don’t understand? It’s far better when doing good work is sufficient. In other words, the less attached we are to outcomes the better. When fulfilling our own standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. When the effort—not the results, good or bad—is enough. With ego, this is not nearly sufficient. No, we need to be recognized. We need to be compensated. Especially problematic is the fact that, often, we get that. We are praised, we are paid, and we start to assume that the two things always go together. The “expectation hangover” inevitably ensues.”
― Ryan Holiday, quote from Ego Is the Enemy
“Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels.”
― Stephen Crane, quote from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
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