Alice Munro Quotes

My daughter lived with my wife being ill since she was 2.

I believe that all the important people in my life prior to 1982 were victimized by my illness.

When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, my middle school friends and myself really had no idea the impact of that diagnosis, but my family did.

The only real experiences I've had with therapists were the ones who were working with me and my family when my mother was ill.

Mum's a worrier, she looked after everybody apart from herself - I think it runs in the family.

It's hard enough to work and raise a family when your kids are all healthy and relatively normal, but when you add on some kind of disability or disease, it can just be such a burden.

My entire youth was spent with an incredibly ill parent... I don't think you can grow up that way and not be marked by that experience.

When someone has cancer, the whole family and everyone who loves them does, too.

There are psychological repercussions to illness and we need a little more help to get through the effects not only on the afflicted but on the family. And I think there's even a place for humor in that.

My mother started to suffer from multiple sclerosis, but nobody knew what MS was then. My father didn't - and later he suffered a great deal of guilt over that. It was an awful business and very fraught.

People that go through what I went through and people going through divorce, it's really a difficulty process; it's heartbreaking and it hurts really bad. It can really mess with your head.

My parents' divorce made an important change in my life. It affected me. After that, when I can't play Wimbledon, it was tough. For one month I was outside the world.

Eighty percent of my life is normal like any other mother. I worry about my children, if they're doing all right. I worry that my husband is doing well.

When I was 13 I asked my mother if it was possible for this to end - I'd had enough of it. And that was right about the time that we got a call for 'The Exorcist' interview.

As well as writing novels and doing short-order journalism, I am also the full-time carer of my husband, who has Alzheimer's. Each day feels like a race that must be run.

I've learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you'd talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

My parents' divorce made an important change in my life. It affected me.

In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while privately I was caring for my own dying mother. It was torture.

I think maybe when you live with someone who is really very ill for a long time, it somehow gives you more of a greedy appetite for life and maybe, yes, you are less measured in your behaviour than you would otherwise be.

I want to stand on a platform in the middle of Times Square and shout, 'You do not have to battle your Crohn's disease alone.'

I decided to write 'True Refuge' during a major dive in my own health. Diagnosed with a genetic disease that affected my mobility, I faced tremendous fear and grief about losing the fitness and physical freedom I loved.

Living in a community with very wounded people, I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg.

I've seen my own kids go through their own ups and downs, and as a mother, you want to make it better.

I notice that if there are some times I've been stressed, because I'm human and stress about things, that affects your kids. So you have to make sure you're a happy mom so they can be happy.

Divorce is hard, and it takes a lot out of you.