Author

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

From Alice Munro

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was 'call attention to yourself,' or 'think you were smart.' My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson's disease.

From Alice Munro

Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn't a rule about this. But there's a tidy sense about many stories I read. 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.

From Alice Munro

Naturally, my stories are about women - I'm a woman. I don't know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I'm not always sure what is meant by 'feminist.' In the beginning, I used to say, 'Well, of course I'm a feminist.' But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I'm not.

From Alice Munro

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I'm not sure it's the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

From Alice Munro

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren't taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

From Alice Munro

I feel that I've done what I wanted to do, and that makes me feel fairly content.

From Alice Munro

I can have people around a lot more because I'm not always chasing them away so I can work on my novel. My non-novel, I mean.

From Alice Munro

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.

From Alice Munro

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people's lives present themselves.

From Alice Munro

Alice Munro

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