Runaway Alice Munro Quotes

The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.

Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.

What she wants to do if she can get the time to do it, is not so much to live in the past as to open it up and get one good look at it".

This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don't think about it at all. The thing that was your bright treasure. You don't think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember. This is what happens. ... Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.

She keeps on hoping from a word from Penelope, but not in any strenuous way. She hopes as people who know better hope for undeserved blessings, spontaneous remissions, things of that sort.

She could not explain or quite understand that it wasn't altogether jealousy she felt, it was rage. And not because she couldn't shop like that or dress like that. It was because that was what girls were supposed to be like. That was what men - people, everybody - thought they should be like. Beautiful, treasured, spoiled, selfish, pea-brained. That was what a girl should be, to be fallen in love with. Then she would become a mother and she'd be all mushily devoted to her babies. Not selfish anymore, but just as pea-brained. Forever.

....Lived in curious but not unhappy isolation…subscribing to magazines nobody around them read, listening to programs on the national radio network which nobody around them listened to…

A certain kind of seriousness in a girl could cancel out looks

As a matter of fact she does not know to this day if those words were spoken, or if he only caught her, wound his arms around her, held her so tightly, with such continual, changing pressures that it seemed more than two arms were needed, that she was surrounded by him, his body strong and light, demanding and renouncing all at once, as if he was telling her she was wrong to give up on him, everything was possible, but then again that she was not wrong, he meant to stamp himself on her and go." "Passion

Odd choices were simply easier for men, most of whom would find women glad to marry them. Not so the other way around.

When two human beings divided by hostility are both, at the same time, mystified—no, frightened—by the same apparition, there is a bond that springs up between them, and they find themselves united in the most unexpected way. United in their humanity—that is the only way I can describe it. We parted almost as friends.

يكي دوبار كارلا يكدفعه شروع كرده بود به حرف زدن و كار خيلي احمقانه اي كرده بود، فقط براي آنكه فضا را عوض كند. از آن كارهايي كه كه وقتي سواركارهاي دست و پاچلفتي و وحشتزده تازه كار احساس حقارت مي كردند، از او سر مي زد.

Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang on to it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.

انگار یک جایی توی ریه های کارلا سوزن مرگباری بود، و اگر با احتیاط نفس می کشید, شاید آن را حس نمی کرد. ولی هر از گاه باید نفس عمیق می کشید، و سوزن هنوز همان جا بود.

I think that this is minor. Things will happen in your life—things will probably happen in your life—that will make this seem minor. Other things you’ll be able to feel guilty about.

Shakespeare should have prepared her.

I have been incredibly lucky," he said. "Lucky in my life. Oh, I know some people would not say so. They'd say I hadn't stuck with anything, or that I hadn't made any money. They'd say I wasted that time when I was down-and-out. But that's not true. "I heard the call," he said, raising his eyebrows, half smiling at himself. "Seriously. I did. I heard the call to get out of the box. Out of the got-to-do-something-big box. Out of the ego box.

They were a pair of people with no middle ground, nothing between polite formalities and an engulfing intimacy

But when she was finished running away, when she just went on, what would she put in his place?

Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang on to it. You must not let yourself be waylaid and have it taken from you.

Getting and spending we lay waste our powers. Why do we let ourselves be so busy and miss doing things we should have, or would have, liked to do? Remember

گريس خودش نمي دانست چقدر سرد است، فكر مي كرد اشتياقي كه نشان مي دهد بايد منجر به لذت هايي شود كه، در خلوت و خيال، با آنها آشنا بود، و احساس مي كرد از آن به بعدش را موري بايد به عهده بگيرد. كه نمي گرفت.

براي همين حالا دارم راه و روشم را عوض مي كنم و دستكم فعلا خداحافظ دفتر خاطرات. هميشه احساس مي كردم ماجراي واقعاعجيب و غريب در زندگي ام اتفاق مي افتد، و خيلي مهم است كه همه چيز را ثبت كرده باشم. يعني اين فقط يك احساس بود؟

گريس نمي توانست توضيح بدهد يا درست بفهمد كه آنچه احساس مي كرد دو هم رفته حسادت نبود، خشم بود٠ دليلش هم اين نبود كه نمي توانست آن طوري خريد كند يا لباس بپوشد٠ اين بود كه از دخترها توقع داشتند اين جوري باشند٠ مردها، مردم، همه آدم ها، فكر مي كردند دختر بايد اين جوري باشد٠ خوشگل، عزيزدردانه، ننر، خودخواه، با مغزي به اندازه نخود٠ دختر بايد اين جوري باشد تا بشود عاشقش شد. بعد مادر مي شد و خودش را با سوز و گداز وقف بچه هايش مي كرد٠ ديگر خودخواه نبود، فقط مغزش همچنان به قد نخود بود٠ تا ابد٠

The thing about life, Harry had told Lauren, was to live in the world with interest. To keep your eyes open and see the possibilities - see the humanity - in everybody you met. To be aware. If he had anything at all to teach her it was that. Be aware.

She could not picture it. Herself riding on the subway or streetcar, caring for new horses, talking to new people, living among hordes of people every day who were not Clark. A life, a place, chosen for that specific reason––that it would not contain Clark. The strange and terrible thing coming clear to her about that world of the future, as she now pictured it, was that she would not exist there. She would only walk around, and open her mouth and speak, and do this and do that. She would not really be there. And what was strange about it was that she was doing all this, she was riding on this bus in the hope of recovering herself. As Mrs. Jamieson might say––and as she herself might with satisfaction have said––taking charge of her own life. With nobody glowering over her, nobody's mood infecting her with misery. But what would she care about? How would she know that she was alive? While she was running away from him––now––Clark still kept his place in her life. But when she was finished running away, when she just went on, what would she put in his place? What else––who else––could ever be so vivid a challenge?

...they lived in a curious but not unhappy isolation, though her father was a popular schoolteacher. Partly they were cut off by Sara’s heart trouble, but also by their subscribing to magazines nobody around them read, listening to programs on the national radio network, which nobody around them listened to. By Sara’s making her own clothes—sometimes ineptly— from Vogue patterns, instead of Butterick. Even by the way they preserved some impression of youth instead of thickening and slouching like the parents of Juliet’s schoolfellows.

He described to her the house he had built for himself, in outside appearance a shack, but delightful inside, at least to him. A sleeping loft with a little round window. Everything he needed right where he could put his hand to it, out in the open, nothing in cupboards. A short walk from the house he had a bathtub sunk in the earth, in the middle of a bed of sweet herbs. He would carry hot water to it by the pailful and lounge there under the stars, even in the winter. He grew vegetables, and shared them with the deer. (From the story "Powers")

Le truc, dans la vie, avait expliqué Harry à Lauren, était de vivre avec intérêt. D'ouvrir l'oeil pour voir les possibilités - voir l'humanité - qui existait chez chacun de ceux qu'on rencontrait. Être à l'écoute. S'il avait quoi que ce soit à lui apprendre, c'était cela. Être à l'écoute. (p.212)

هری به لارن گفته بود در زندگی مهم این است که حواست جمع باشد. چشم هایت را باز کنی و امکانات بالقوه را-انسانیت را- در هر کسی ببینی. توجه کنی. اگر می توانست چیزی به لارن یاد بدهد، همین بود. توجه کردن.

That

The thing that was your bright treasure. You don’t think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember

While they were sitting in the room above his shop there had been a distance, and she had never feared—and never hoped— that the distance would be altered by any brusque or clumsy or sly movement of his. On the few occasions when this had happened with other men she had felt embarrassed for them. Now of necessity she and this man walked fairly close to each other and if they met someone their arms might brush together. Or he would move slightly behind her to get out of the way and his arm or chest knocked for a second against her back. These possibilities, and the knowledge that the people they met must see them as a couple, set up something like a hum, a tension, across her shoulders and down that one arm. He asked her about Antony and Cleopatra, had she liked it (yes) and what part she had liked best. What came into her mind then were various bold and convincing embraces, but she could not say so.

Chẳng phải hầu hết con người ai cũng cảm thấy thế, không lúc này thì cũng lúc kia? Cô đơn và bất hạnh?

Sex meant nothing to him, or at any rate it did not mean what it meant (had meant) to her...

Yet those few hours filled her with an assurance that the life she was going back to, which seemed so makeshift and unsatisfactory, was only temporary and could easily be put up with.

She knew the danger of anything she might say. The danger of her own desire, because she didn't really know what sort of desire it was, what it was for. They had shied away from whatever that was years ago, and they would surely have to do so now that they were old–not terribly old, but old enough to appear unsightly and absurd. And unfortunate enough to have spent their time together lying.

He did take her to the movies. They saw Father of the Bride. Grace hated it. She hated girls like Elizabeth Taylor in that movie, she hated spoiled rich girls of whom nothing was ever asked but that they wheedle and demand. Maury said that it was only supposed to be a comedy, but she said that was not the point. She could not make clear what the point was. Anybody would think that it was because she worked as a waitress and was too poor to go to college, and that if she wanted anything like that kind of wedding she would have to spend years saving up to pay for it herself. (Maury did think this, and was stricken with respect for her, almost with reverence.) She could not explain or quite understand that it wasn’t altogether jealousy she felt, it was rage. And not because she couldn’t shop like that or dress like that. It was because that was what girls were supposed to be like. That was what men— people, everybody—thought they should be like. Beautiful, treasured, spoiled, selfish, pea-brained. That was what a girl should be, to be fallen in love with. Then she would become a mother and she’d be all mushily devoted to her babies. Not selfish anymore, but just as pea-brained. Forever. She was fuming about this while sitting beside a boy who had fallen in love with her because he had believed—instantly—in the integrity and uniqueness of her mind and soul, and had seen her poverty as a romantic gloss on that.