“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.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
“I loved taking off. In my own house, I seemed to be often looking for a place to hide - sometimes from the children but more often from the jobs to be done and the phone ringing and the sociability of the neighborhood. I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
“people who believe in miracles do not make much fuss when they actually encounter one”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
“Like the children in fairy stories who have seen their parents make pacts with terrifying strangers, who have discovered that our fears are based on nothing but the truth, but who come back fresh from marvellous escapes and take up their knives and forks, with humility and good manners, prepared to live happily ever after -- like them, dazed and powerful with secrets, I never said a word”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
“I loved taking off. In my own house, I seemed to be often looking for a place to hide--sometimes from the children but more often from the jobs to be done and the phone ringing and the sociability of the neighborhood. I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself. I lived in a state of siege, always losing just what I wanted to hold on to[...] It was being a watcher that did it. A watcher, not a keeper.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
“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 “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....”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
“Let's see, what've we got for the little girl to eat? Nothing, I hoped, but he brought a tin of Christmas candies, which seemed to have melted then hardened then melted again, so the colored stripes had run. They had a taste of nails.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
“The only choice I make is to write about what interests me in a way that interests me, that gives me pleasure. It may not look like pleasure, because the difficulties can make me morose and distracted, but that’s what it is—the pleasure of telling the story I mean to tell as wholly as I can tell it, of finding out in fact what that story is, by working around the different ways of telling it.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
“How can you get your finger on it, feel that life beating? It was more a torment than a comfort to think about this, because I couldn’t get hold of it at all. I”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
“and there was still a lot of soft snow in the bush. We”
― Alice Munro, quote from Selected Stories
Alice Munro
Born place: in Wingham, Ontario, Canada
Born date July 10, 1931
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“What we see may deceive us - the skin may be deceptive - but there has to be one truth, right? It can't all just be a jumble of perceptions. So what really exists out there, beyond what we can see? We're so dependent on the surfaces of what we see. But if we could see past the skin of this world...”
― Ted Dekker, quote from Skin
“I don't think of myself as evil, but no can say they've led a perfect life.”
― H.P. Mallory, quote from Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble
“Consummation is consumption
We cannot consummate our bliss and not consume
All joys are cakes and vanish in eating
All bliss is sugar's melting in the mouth”
― Wilfred Owen, quote from The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
“He's just watching out for you, Desiree.' Dee patted Mace's arm. 'Bless his heart.'
Mace growled. 'I know that's not a compliment, Dee-Ann.”
― quote from Big Bad Beast
“All the expressions that are possible crossed its face, as if its thoughts were wise and limitless one moment, daft and animal the next. And Liga too was pulled towards awe, that this little girl-thing gave off such an air of being entitled, and then towards pity at its abjectness and its frailty and-how soft it was, the surface of it, and so warm! She could not believe the tiny makings of its mouth, or its perfected eyelashes, its ears like uncrumpling buds, all down and tenderness. She was full of the joy of her father being gone-that she could sit like this all night if she wanted, not bothered or harangued, without a remark from any other person, and watch this creature busy with its morsel of life, its scrap of sleep, its breaths light as moth-wings lifting its narrow red chest.”
― Margo Lanagan, quote from Tender Morsels
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