In dreams you can have the feeling that you've had this dream before, that you have this dream over and over again, and you know that it's really nothing that simple. You know that there's a whole underground system that you call 'dreams,' having nothing better to call them, and that this system is not like roads or tunnels but more like a live body network, all coiling and stretching, unpredictable but finally familiar - where you are now, where you've always been.
Alice MunroMemory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.
Alice MunroThere was a danger whenever I was on home ground. It was the danger of seeing my life through other eyes than my own. Seeing it as an ever-increasing roll of words like barbed wire, intricate, bewildering, uncomfortingโset against the rich productions, the food, flowers, and knitted garments, of other womenโs domesticity. It became harder to say that it was worth the trouble.
Alice MunroBecause if she let go of her grief even for a minute it would only hit her harder when she bumped into it again.
Alice MunroThe 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