Alice Munro Quotes

'm really proud of 'Sad, Sad World' because it manages to state a very complex paradox of an emotion that I experienced when I had children, which is this great happiness and this great intensity, but with that intensity comes a deeper understanding of the world.

Movies can provide tear-inducing or comically-entertaining representations of love, but many agree that its deeper conflicting complexities often seem unfathomable.

Character and emotionality don't always have to be relegated to quieter, more simple constructs.

My biography of Frank Sinatra is not paean to his music but rather an illumination of the man behind the music, who once described himself as 'an 18-karat manic-depressive who lived a life of violent emotional contradictions with an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as happiness.'

There are really a lot of dark shadings to a lot of my stuff.

I like the idea of a record being more than one thing emotionally - human beings go through so many emotions in one day - and I like those things sitting next to each other.

I'm a passionate person; there's a lot going on underneath my carousel of blazers: a cauldron of sensitivity and emotion.

What can I say? I'm a complicated guy.

I am not a calm, happy person. I am complicated.

People are mostly layers of violence and tenderness wrapped like bulbs, and it is difficult to say what makes them onions or hyacinths.

I never feel the need to go out and make some grand statement that I'm dark and twisty and complicated, because I'm not that either. It's just not as simple as ponies and rainbows, though I do love ponies and rainbows.

Beautiful mind, tortured soul. I do have to figure out why I am attracted to these broken birds.

I'm complicated, sentimental, lovable, honest, loyal, decent, generous, likable, and lonely. My personality is not split; it's shredded.

(...) And metaphors like cats behind your smile, Each one wound up to purr, each one a pride, Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside (...)

My life is not possible to tell. I change every day, change my patterns, my concepts, my interpretations. I am a series of moods and sensations. I play a thousand roles. I weep when I find others play them for me. My real self is unknown. My work is merely an essence of this vast and deep adventure.

I think it's increasingly hard to have deep self-knowledge without entering the darkness in some way.

but, he also said it because part of him wanted more of her, this cold woman who was not exactly cold, this rock who was not stone.

We cannot possibly imagine the variety of contradictions in every heart.

You can love someone you mistrust.

The oldest emotion in the world may be that of being moved; but to describe it-just to name it-must have been like trying to catch something invisible.

Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand." - Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}

Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage.

But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.

Each substance of a grief has twenty shadows.

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.