Alice Munro citations

Page 2

“It’s just life. You can’t beat life.”

“Braininess is not attractive unless combined with some signs of elegance; class.”

“What she felt was a lighthearted sort of compassion, almost like laughter. A swish of tender hilarity, getting the better of all her sores and hollows, for the time given.”

“I felt in him what women feel in men, something so tender, swollen, tyrannical, absurd; I would never take the consequences of interfering with it.”

“He was evidently the sort of person who posed questions that were traps for you to fall into.”

“The images, the language, of pornography, and romance are alike; monotonous and mechanically seductive, quickly leading to despair.”

“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.”