I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

Novels shouldn’t aspire to answer questions, and I wouldn’t presume to offer advice about love or marriage in any case. What’s fascinating to me about marriage as a subject for fiction—a subject that fiction has taken on with gusto since the 19th century—is how unknowable other people’s relationships are. Even the marriages of your parents, your siblings, your closest friends always remain something of a mystery. Only in fiction can you pretend to know people completely.

Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories.

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.

I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can make something great without that.

I think, in general, it's better not to respond to reviews of your work.