I used to feel for years and years and years that I was very remiss not to have written a novel and I would question people who wrote novels and try to find out how they did it and how they had got past page 30. Then, with the approach of old age, I began to just think: โWell, lucky I can do anything at all.
Alice MunroPeople 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 MunroOne stroke of lightning does not have to lead anywhere, but to the next stroke of lightning.
Alice MunroCountry manners. Even if somebody phones up to tell you your house is burning down, they ask first how you are.
Alice MunroI was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.
Alice MunroYou think that would have changed things? The answer is of course, and for a while, and never.
Alice MunroIf I decided to send this to you, where would I send it? When I think of writing the whole address on the envelope I am paralyzed. It's too painful to think of you in the same place with your life going on in the same way, minus me. And to think of you not there, you somewhere else but I don't know where that is, is worse.
Alice Munro