I'm always trying. Between every book, I think, 'Well now, it's time to get down to the serious stuff.' — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
I can have people around a lot more because I'm not always chasing them away so I can work on my novel.… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don't obey the rules of progression… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
There's a kind of tension that if I'm getting a story right I can feel right away, and I don't feel that… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
I want the reader to feel something is astonishing. Not the 'what happens,' but the way everything happens. These long short story… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
I don't always, or even usually, read stories from beginning to end. I start anywhere and proceed in either direction. A story… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
“How Are We to Live is a collection of short stories, not a novel. This in itself is a disappointment. It seems… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
Luck took me right out of myself - I read it in one gulp, and it never let me down. Sharp and… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
I want my stories to be something about life that causes people to say, not, oh, isn't that the truth, but to… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn't intend to. I was going to write a novel. And… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
It must have meant something, though, that at this turn of my life I grabbed up a book. Because it was in… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
'Lives' is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
“A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel,… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
I used to feel for years and years and years that I was very remiss not to have written a novel and… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
For years and years I thought that stories were just practice, till I got time to write a novel, — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
It was at this time that she entirely gave up on reading. The covers of books looked like coffins to her, either… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
I read a book called The Art of Loving. A lot of things seemed clear while I was reading it but afterwards… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
“At high school I was never comfortable for a minute. I did not know about Lonnie. Before an exam, she got icy… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
William Maxwell's my favorite North American writer, I think. And an Irish writer who used to write for 'The New Yorker' called Maeve Brennan,… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
“Not very long ago I was driving with my husband on the back roads of Grey County, which is to the north and east… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
“Her silent singing wrapped around the story she was telling herself, which she extended further every night on the deck. (Averill often told herself… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
“Something happened here. In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, were something happened, and then there are… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information. — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
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… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
What she wants to do if she can get the time to do it, is not so much to live in the past as… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
“Children Katy's age had no problem with monotony. In fact they embraced it, diving into it and wrapping the familiar words round their tongues… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
“This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
The images, the language, of pornography, and romance are alike; monotonous and mechanically seductive, quickly leading to despair. — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a… — Alice Munro Copy Share Image
