For what was living with a man if it wasn't living inside his insanity?

— Alice Munro

Her attitude towards sex is very comforting to those of her friends who get into terrible states of passion and jealousy, and feel cut loose from their moorings. She seems to regard sex as a wholesome, slightly silly indulgence, like dancing and nice dinners--something that shouldn't interfere with people's being kind and cheerful to each other.

— Alice Munro

Her silent singing wrapped around the story she was telling herself, which she extended further every night on the deck. (Ave rill often told herself stories-- the activity seemed to her as unavoidable as dreaming.) Her singing was a barrier set between the world in her head and the world outside, between her body and the onslaught of the stars.

— Alice Munro

He was evidently the sort of person who posed questions that were traps for you to fall into.

— Alice Munro

Housework never really bothered me... what bothered me about it later was that it was expected to be your life... when you're a housewife, you are constantly interrupted. You have no space in your life. It isn't the fact that you do the laundry.

— Alice Munro

I began to understand that there were certain talkers--certain girls--whom people liked to listen to, not because of what they, the girls, had to say, but because of the delight they took in saying it. A delight in themselves, a shine on their faces, a conviction that whatever they were telling about was remarkable and that they themselves could not help but give pleasure. There might be other people--people like me--who didn't concede this, but that was their loss. And people like me would never be the audience these girls were after, anyway.

— Alice Munro

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

— Alice Munro

I don't think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I'm enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

— Alice Munro

I felt in him what women feel in men, something so tender, swollen, tyrannical, absurd; I would never take the consequences of interfering with it.

— Alice Munro

If you live long enough as a parent nowadays, you discover that you have made mistakes you didn't bother to know about along with the ones you do know about all too well. You are somewhat humbled at heart, sometimes disgusted with yourself.

— Alice Munro