Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

I miss home. I miss ignorance. I've seen a beauty I can't fathom in the Aquifer, and met a girl who moves my heart.

I would remind you that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Love insists the loved loves back

I found fear stimulating. Particularly after you've done something that you'd been frightened of at the time, but you carried through and did the job.

Everybody's entitled to their own experience.

As I get older, I get smaller. I see other parts of the world I didn't see before. Other points of view. I see outside myself more.

I wanted to play some more grown-up music - jazz.

Puerto Rico is not a full part of the United States. We're a territory or a colonial territory.

A divine dance appears in the soul and the body at the time of peace and union.Anyone can learn the dance, just listen to the music.