Alice Munro Quotes

I don't want to lose my legs, you know. I don't want to be wheeled around in a wheelchair. I don't want to be attached to a catheter. I saw all that stuff happen to my father, and as much as it upset me because I loved my father so much, it also really traumatized me.

I love my mother, not as a prisoner of atherosclerosis, but as a person; and I must love her enough to accept her as she is, now, for as long as this dwindling may take.

Everywhere I go people come up to me, they mob me - anyone who has MS or has a relative with MS - they come up and hug and cry.

The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.

You never think about your own mortality. At least not until your back gives way when you're 40.

When you see people your own age afflicted and experiencing life-threatening illnesses, I think it prompts you to apply to yourself the philosophy, 'I want to do the best I know how to do every day.'

I was going blind, and I was in a wheelchair. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life living with my parents.

I can no longer walk. I can no longer swim. But I'm lucky when I see how animals suffer.

I'd like to think I'm a good guy as I've gotten older.

Before MS moved in on me, I'd worked for seven years as a city lawyer, as the editor of a literary magazine, and before the age of 20, I'd also worked as a cadet journalist and as an assistant director in both film and TV. And then, after the lesions of MS, both on my spine and in my brain, I was the opposite of bionic.

For many children, it's seeing a beloved relative ill and in pain that leads them to want to become doctors. But, for me, it was watching my grandma get better.

As you get older, you realize just figuring out how to be nice to the people in your personal sphere is almost more challenging than trying to change the bigger culture.

When Joe Kennedy had his stroke, all our plans went out the window.

I don't know whether your heart ever necessarily changes, but time changes the way that you perceive the world. And you just hope it gives you more empathy and all those other things.

As far as my mindset changing, I see myself having more empathy in my older age.

Seventy years old! How did that happen? I was part of the generation that wasn't going to die.

We have all witnessed, as well, family, friends, or medical workers who have chosen to provide years of loving care to persons who may suffer from Alzheimer's or other debilitating illnesses precisely because they are human persons, not because doing so instrumentally advances some other hidden objective.

Because I've been so blessed with a background in nursing and spent so much time with patients at a really intimate, vulnerable time in their lives, the one lesson I've learned is that you never turn down a challenge where you can keep your creative integrity and your heart and soul and your sense of self.

Growing older has helped me become empathetic to other people and their reasons for making choices. I used to think there was a definitive right and wrong and that only I knew what they were and so I should be dictator of the world.

When I make a film about a physically challenged person, I come away with so much. I learn to value what I have. My survival instinct sharpened after 'Black' and 'Guzaarish.'

The truth is my dad was a lovely man who had to retire early from his job as an engineer because he had osteoporosis. It meant he was forced to wear a harness and could hardly breathe.

No one looks forward to getting old do they?

If we talk about 'Groundhog Day' as a humanistic text - we only have one life, and there's no punishment or reward afterwards - then the wisdom is, just be kind because that will make you happy and the people around you happy.

I've become more cause-driven as I've got older. Maybe that's a result of having kids; you become less carefree and more worried about things.

Being attentive to the things that add meaning to our lives alongside politics will help us inform our politics with the values that really do make America great.