There would never be any room in her for anything else. No room for anything but the realization of what she had done. Alice Munro More Quotes by Alice Munro More Quotes From Alice Munro Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story. Alice Munro anecdotes writing memories I have never kept diaries. I just remember a lot and am more self-centered than most people. Alice Munro self diaries 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 it altered by being viewed from these windows. Alice Munro stories house world But I never cleaned thoroughly enough, my reorganization proved to be haphazard, the disgraces came unfailingly to light, and it was clear how we failed, how disastrously we fell short of that ideal of order and cleanliness, household decency which I as much as anybody else believed in. Alice Munro reorganization light order Luck took me right out of myself - I read it in one gulp, and it never let me down. Sharp and surprising but always responsible, no tricks for tricks' sake; so satisfying, with its shifting and puzzles. So much fiction turns out to be diversion, in spite of fancy claims, and doesn't really look at anything. Well - this does. Alice Munro luck doe looks It's as if tendencies that seem most deeply rooted in our minds, most private and singular, have come in as spores on the prevailing wind, looking for any likely place to land, any welcome. Alice Munro land mind wind In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward. Alice Munro straightforward sometimes way I would ... go up to the mailbox and sit in the grass, waiting. ... Till it came to me one day there were women doing this with their lives, all over. There were women just waiting and waiting by mailboxes for one letter or another. I imagined me making this journey day after day and year after year, and my hair starting to go gray, and I thought, I was never made to go on like that. ... If there were woman all through life waiting, and women busy and not waiting, I knew which I had to be. Alice Munro journey hair years In twenty years I've never had a day when I didn't have to think about someone else's needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it. Alice Munro writing mean thinking One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk. Alice Munro hate hatred white When I told him on the phone that after all you and I would not be getting married, he said "Oh-oh. Do you think you'll ever manage to get another one?" If I'd objected to his saying that he would naturally have said it was a joke. And it was a joke. I have not managed to get another one but perhaps have not been in the best condition to try. Alice Munro phones trying thinking I knew I would be famous one day. That's because I lived in a very small town and nobody liked doing the same things I did, like writing. Alice Munro one-day would-be writing So what about me? Would I always have to find a high horse? The moral relish, the rising above, the being in the right, which can make me flaunt my losses. Alice Munro rising horse loss Country manners. Even if somebody phones up to tell you your house is burning down, they ask first how you are. Alice Munro phones house country Time is something that interests me a whole lot - past and present, and how the past appears as people change. Alice Munro me change time people Housework never really bothered me... what bothered me about it later was that it was expected to be your life... when you're a housewife, you are constantly interrupted. You have no space in your life. It isn't the fact that you do the laundry. Alice Munro me you space life I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don't think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected. Alice Munro job good think writing 'Royal Beatings' was my first story, and it was published in 1977. But I sent all my early stories to 'The New Yorker' in the 1950s, and then I stopped sending for a long time and sent only to magazines in Canada. 'The New Yorker' sent me nice notes, though - penciled, informal messages. They never signed them. They weren't terribly encouraging. Alice Munro me long-time time long I've often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn't really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn't seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end, I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again, it seems a bit obtrusive. Alice Munro mistakes end story work I had my first baby at twenty-one. Alice Munro twenty-one had first baby
