Alice Munro Quotes

If anyone steps on your ego, instantly, he becomes your enemy. But a Guru is a friend who constantly tramples your ego.

Of course, every time I end a book, I look down at myself and I'm just the same. I'm always disappointed that I'm just the same, but not enough to never do it again!

Knowing that one is always capable of change, the second step lies in making the decision to change. Change does not occur by merely willing it anymore than behavior changes simply through insight.

My everyday job is about superficial beauty, but when I'm not working I prefer to work on my inner beauty - I read a lot, I try to learn.

Before someone can change his ideas, he has to open his heart.

I think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I've just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I've read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that.

You change your life by changing your heart.

The longer I have played, the perception of myself has changed. I conduct myself to other players a bit better.

We all have insecurities. It takes maintenance and constant practice to first identify what they are so we can have an understanding of how we tick and, second, to put forth the action to deal with them.

People hold me accountable. Before I would push people away, but that's not a way to be successful.

Your emotional reactions to the evil you encounter and your judgments of it show you what you need to change in yourself. Changing those parts of your personality that judge, react in fear, and cannot love into acceptance, fearlessness, and love is the journey you were born to make.

Discard yourself and thereby regain yourself. Spread the trap of humility and ensnare love.

Force yourself to be humble, until it becomes second nature. Then it will be an unconscious activity.

We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.

Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean that you can easily rebuild it.

Whoever will cultivate their own mind will find full employment. Every virtue does not only require great care in the planting, but as much daily solicitude in cherishing as exotic fruits and flowers; the vices and passions (which I am afraid are the natural product of the soil) demand perpetual weeding. Add to this the search after knowledge. . . and the longest life is too short.

The act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else's growth.

He who can not learn to love must flatter.

We can’t change the world. The only thing we can change is ourselves, by trying to get a better understanding of our own messed-up wiring.

In order to change the world, I guess a person would have to really get his head together first before he can say anything to the world, to change it.

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.

I wish I had a talking book that told me how to act and look, a talking book that contained keys to past and present memories

You are your only hope, because we're not changing until you do. Our job is to keep coming at you, as hard as we can, with everything that angers, upsets, or repulses you, until you understand. We love you that much, whether we're aware of it or not. The whole world is about you.

One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.

Throughout our lives, we develop our character consciously or unconsciously. In your journey to a life beyond amazing, you'll learn to develop your character in ways that bring remarkable rewards.