"The skin of everyday appearances stretched over such shamelessness, such consuming explosions of lust."

"Speculation can be more gentle, can take its time, when it is not driven by desire."

"So what about me? Would I always have to find a high horse? The moral relish, the rising above, the being in the right, which can make me flaunt my losses."

"He seemed happy. She thought that she seldom concerned herself about Laurence’s being happy. She wanted him to be in a good mood, so that everything would go smoothly, but that was not the same thing."

"A fluid choice, the choice of fantasy, is poured out on the ground and instantly hardens; it has taken its undeniable shape."

"He could no more describe the feeling he got from her than you can describe a smell. It's like the scorch of electricity. It's like burnt kernels of wheat. No, it's like a bitter orange. I give up."

"There were differences never to be mended, a word or an act never to be forgiven, a barrier never to be washed away."

"You would think that Rosemary would understand that. She should have understood what such a choice said - that Karin was not to be made happy, amends were not possible, forgiveness was out of the question."

"Writing this letter is like putting a note in a bottle— And hoping It will reach Japan."

"What he carried with him, all he carried with him, was a lack, something like a lack of air, of proper behavior in his lungs, a difficulty that he supposed would go on forever."

"A certain kind of seriousness in a girl could cancel out looks"

"My need for love had gone underground, like a canny toothache."

"Half my concern in love became how to disguise love, to make it harmless and merry."

"Chronic means that it will be permanent but perhaps not constant."

"If this were fiction, as I said, it would be too much, but it is true."

"He takes up too much room, on the divan and in one's mind. It is simply impossible for me, in his presence, think of anything but him."

"It is all about a girl who is more interested in politics than in love... the Russian censors will not let it be published and the world outside will not want it because it is so Russian."

"You would think as you get older your mind would fill up with what they call the spiritual side of things, but mine just seems to get more and more practical, trying to get something settled."

"The tiny share we have of time appalls me, though my father seems to regard it with tranquillity."

"In your life there are a few places, or maybe only one place, where something has happened. And then there are the other places, which are just other places."

"She hated to hear the word "escape" used about fiction. She might have argued, not just playfully, that it was real life that was the escape. But this was too important to argue about."

"He liked her not knowing. I could tell. He liked her not knowing. Her ignorance woke a pleasure that melted on his tongue, like a lick of toffee."

"Do you ever think that there used to be more sensible explanations about things than there are now?"

"She did not have time to wonder about his being late. He died bent over the sidewalk sign that stood out in front of the hardware store... He had not even had time to get into the store..."

"He says the pills he's got her on will keep her from sinking too low. How low is too low, Roy thinks, and when can you tell?"

"Life is always so full. Getting and spending we lay waste to our powers. Why do we let ourselves be so busy and miss doing things we should have, or would have, liked to do?"

"People have thoughts they’d sooner not have. It happens in life."

"They spoke like caricatures, it was unbearable."

"It was comparable to getting sick from bad ventilation"

"He said that we had just had an argument, what more did I want? It was too polite, I said."

"What good is it if you read Plato and never clean your toilet? asked my mother, reverting to the values of Jubilee."

"Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story." [A Conversation with Alice Munro, BookBrowse, 1998]"

"All these jobs that seemed incidental and almost playful, on the borders of my real life, were going to move front and center."

"A million dollars in those days was a million dollars."

"I was happy in the library. Walls of printed pages, evidence of so many created worlds--this was a comfort to me."

"Poverty in girls is not attractive unless combined with sweet sluttishness, stupidity."

"Her hair had been long and wavy and brown then, natural in curl and color, as he liked it, and her face bashful and soft -- a reflection less of the way she was than of the way he wanted to see her."