91 result(s) for Alice Munro Quotes.
"The best sentences smell of just a touch of sweat."
"I want a form that has the freedom of an essay and the precision of a poem."
"We are the sum of all the moments we overlook. If everything is moving, how do you get a clear view?"
"The story captures a certain event and mood, out of which not that single event comes, but emotions, thoughts, associations."
"The eye that sees the thing is the eye that is part of the story."
"You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your side."
"I like to be dressed like a woman, not a man."
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"When you are a writer, you must be writing something all the time."
"I write about people in a way that will give me the pleasure of their company in my own mind, so I try to make them richly and sometimes amusingly complicated."
"I've always wanted the language of my stories to be sort of ordinary and plain, because I want the readers to feel like they are in the hands of somebody who is telling a story."
"The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say."
"People are curious. A few people are. They are the few who really live. "
"When you are young, your ideas are cut free. They're significant, but they're like little organisms. They're like birds that need to be taught how to fly."
"The windows of the dream opportunely open themselves."
"There is power in imagination, a power that shapes the world."
"I write the best when I'm not in control. When things are being done through me that I am not on top of or aware of."
"The writer takes reality and moves it around and changes things so that not only does it come closer to her way of seeing things, but goes beyond her way of seeing things."
"There is no mark of weakness in having doubts, only in failing to resist them."
"I never went to a creative writing class, and I never realized I wanted to write until I was well into my thirties."
"You can certainly have a successful life without such inventions. However I can't imagine it."
"Is life about surviving? Is life about fighting back?"
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"All your thoughts are fabulous. You don't think where your thoughts come from. You just write them down."
"I just want to write something that is useful."
"What is valuable is not for me."
"The art is as good as the art."
"The unexpected happens, the reality happens even if you think you have imagined the reality."
"I really was unsatisfied with what I was doing, I wanted to do something useful."
"I want to write something new, something extraordinary."
"I want to reach out and touch, to feel for someone."
"People are curious. A few people are. They are driven to take chances to see what happens."
"I would not be happy unless I had written."
"I hope when I'm on the deathbed, people talk about my stories."
"There are all sorts of silences and each of them means a different thing."
"The role of the writer is like the role of the psychoanalyst - to find out what's hidden, which is usually more interesting than what's obvious."
"The world is always a little beyond us."
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"It's only later that we’ll be able to see a little better, to put things in perspective."
"The stories we hear in childhood are the ones we remember all our lives."
"Life would not be life if everything were resolved."
"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."
"I am invigorated with life when I must create stories."
"People are stubborn about what they perceive to be the right thing or the wrong thing, and it makes them difficult to live with."
"The job of literature is to try to make our society safe for contradiction."
"A story is not like a road to follow. It's more like a house."
"The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead."
"I can’t escape the past, so I’m always sifting through it, trying to be free of it."
"Literature is at the heart of our culture and as powerful as anything can be."
"The telling of stories takes me out of myself, too."
"The challenge is to welcome change and not to fear it because it’s all among of the very few things that makes life on earth possible."
"There is a limit to the amount of misery and disarray you will put up with, for love, just as there is a limit to the amount of mess you can stand around a house."
"Literature works at the level of the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, the chapters. And what’s always so wonderful about it is that it works in the mind of the reader and it’s a very active kind of working, rather than just a passive kind of receiving."
"When you’re young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You’re your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don’t yet know about the habit they have, of coming back."
"The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history."
"I would not be able to live without writing, loved life was not enough."
"The concise freedom of story writing is a way of healing loss."
"Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it fills in, it blanks out."
"The writer's job is to get the main thing — story, people, atmosphere — present in his own mind. If this was clear there would never be any need to write it."
"I've always been more interested in the way of life. Because I am scared stiff of my own little rough patches."
"Every writer lives in a state of exile. Exile is not a threatening thing for a writer. It is like a faintly embarrassing relative."
"An existence devoted to observing, observing and understanding people"
"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."
"People are curious. A few people are. ... They fill it in and pin it down."
"People's lives, in Jubilee as everywhere, were dull, simple, amazing and unfathomable - deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum."
"There is a limit to the amount of misery and disarray you will put up with, for love, just as there is a limit to the amount of mess you can stand around a house. You can't know the limit beforehand, but you will know when you've reached it."
"Love takes up so much room in the brain, it hasn't much left over for worry."
"An artist works outside the realm of strict logic. Simply knowing one's intention and then executing it does not make good art."
"The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple."
"The writer takes reality and moves it around."
"The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream."
"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."
"You are not protected, but you are prepared. That's a kind of protection."
"Silence can be more disturbing than noise, it’s the sound of the soul descending deep into the labyrinth of hurt."
"Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye, they teach us."
"People's minds are trained to believe that the regulated life we live is as natural as the earth and the sky."
"The argument was not new, but it took me years to understand that each man was an island and that one ran the risk of being condemned to live like a castaway."
"There does not seem to be a plan."
"There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story."
"The freedom of falling is an interesting way to escape the years of childhood. And one learns how to escape it by being in denial about it."
"Men cheat le gue qu'il aiment, women cheat le gue qui les aime."
"Silence has a loud voice if it is the truth that is kept hidden."
"It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success."
"A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end… but not necessarily in that order."
"Adults didn’t seem to understand children. They were always caught up in their own lives, as though their time was populated with other, more consequential things."
"The constant happiness is curiosity."
"Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories."
"The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours."
"The stories we tell about ourselves may or may not be true, but they do reveal why we are the way we are."
"We are the sum of our parts, and not the total."
"Forgiveness, particularly when you don't expect it coming, when it takes you by surprise, when it holds no hurt or blame but only sweetness of understanding and relief, is a kind of mercy."
"The complexity of things – the things within things – just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple."
"An emotion seen in its passing like this can be recognized more clearly than when it is followed and dwelt on."
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