Alice Munro Quotes

I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.

There's so much guilt there attached to having a perfectly good life.

I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity.

Remorse, the fatal egg that pleasure laid.

I'm ashamed of what I did.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

What is guilt? Guilt is the pledge drive constantly hammering in our heads that keeps us from fully enjoying the show. Guilt is the reason they put the articles in Playboy.

I should have worked harder in my life. I suffer from a guilt complex.

It's a horrible thing to realize what you've done.

Guilt is a weird thing to me. I don't have a lot of it.

Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.

Guilt is a supreme waste of time and energy.

I don't think I will ever be able to forgive myself for what I have done.

I feel terrible about it. Part of it is the horror of what happened and part of it is my guilt about being a part of it.

Your people invented guilt, but my people perfected it.

I always felt guilty. My whole life.

It doesn't matter whether I'm judged criminal. I have a great feeling of guilt - I have a feeling that I ran after Hitler like a wildfire without reason. If I can sacrifice my life to make something good, I'd gladly do it.

Guilt was its own prison.

Our faults afflict us more than our good deeds console. Pain is ever uppermost in the conscience as in the heart.

We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.

But the guilt goes even deeper than that. It, too, is dust: Layers and layers of it have accumulated. Because if it weren’t for me, Lena and Alex would never have been caught at all. I told on them. I was jealous. God forgive me, for I have sinned.

I've always been a magnet for guilt.

Guilt is the most destructive of all emotions. It mourns what has been while playing no part in what may be, now or in the future.

They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame.