His face contained for me all possibilities of fierceness and sweetness, pride and submissiveness, violence, self-containment. I never saw more in it than I had when I saw it first, because I saw everything then. The whole thing in him that I was going to love, and never catch or explain.

Alice Munro

Categorized in : Faces Self Pride

You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.

Alice Munro

shame parent real

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind. When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her.

Alice Munro

remember men rooms

I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.

Alice Munro

important people art

Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls... Even when they're being kind... especially when they're being kind.

Alice Munro

be-kind soul people

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.

Alice Munro

happened

I want my stories to be something about life that causes people to say, not, oh, isn't that the truth, but to feel some kind of reward from the writing, and that doesn't mean that it has to be a happy ending or anything, but just that everything the story tells moves the reader in such a way that you feel you are a different person when you finish.

Alice Munro

writing mean moving

The constant happiness is curiosity.

Alice Munro

inspirational-life curiosity epic

The story fails but your faith in the importance of doing the story doesn't fail.

Alice Munro

importance failing stories

Hatred is always a sin, my mother told me. Remember that. One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk. I was struck by that and meant to try it, but knew I shouldn’t waste the milk.

Alice Munro

hatred mother white

Writing is hard, but the more you write, and enjoy what you write, the better it gets.

Alice Munro

hard enjoy writing

The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.

Alice Munro

subtle fearless kissing

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

anecdotes writing people

People are curious. A few people are. ... They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.

Alice Munro

notebook knowing reading

The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

Alice Munro

chaos simple mean

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.

Alice Munro

never-forgive forgiveness forgiving

Life would be grand if it weren't for the people.

Alice Munro

ifs would-be people

Love removes the world for you, and just as surely when it's going well as when it's going badly.

Alice Munro

remove wells world

It’s just life. You can’t beat life.

Alice Munro

beats

The thing is to be happy, no matter what. Just try that. You can. It gets to be easier and easier. It's nothing to do with circumstances. You wouldn't believe how good it is. Accept everything and then tragedy disappears. Or tragedy lightens, anyway, you're just there, going along easy in the world.

Alice Munro

tragedy trying believe

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

treasure taken people