The Moons of Jupiter Quotes

“They were all in their early thirties. An age at which it is sometimes hard to admit that what you are living is your life.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“The images, the language, of pornography, and romance are alike; monotonous and mechanically seductive, quickly leading to despair.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“Now I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“Now that I think of it, she looked splendid. I wish I had met her somewhere else. I wish I had appreciated her as she deserved. I wish that everything had gone differently.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

I lie in bed beside my little sister, listening to the singing in the yard. Life is transformed, by these voices, by these presences, by their high spirits and grand esteem, for themselves and each other. My parents, all of us, are on holiday. The mixture of voices and words is so complicated and varied it seems that such confusion, such jolly rivalry, will go on forever, and then to my surprise—for I am surprised, even though I know the pattern of rounds—the song is thinning out, you can hear the two voices striving.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

Then the one voice alone, one of them singing on, gamely, to the finish. One voice in which there is an unexpected note of entreaty, of warning, as it hangs the five separate words on the air. Life is. Wait. But a. Now, wait. Dream.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“Her attitude towards sex is very comforting to those of her friends who get into terrible states of passion and jealousy, and feel cut loose from their moorings. She seems to regard sex as a wholesome, slightly silly indulgence, like dancing and nice dinners--something that shouldn't interfere with people's being kind and cheerful to each other.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“Everybody said to me back home, what do you want to go to Alaska for, and I said, because I've never been there, isn't that a good enough reason?”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“All they did was stir up desire, and longing, and hopelessness, a trio of miserable caged wildcats that had been installed in me without my permission, or at least without my understanding how long they would live and how vicious they would be.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“Speculation can be more gentle, can take its time, when it is not driven by desire.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“Long after all the chocolates were eaten, and the cousins had gone, we kept the chocolate-box in the linen-drawer in the dining-room sideboard, waiting for some ceremonial use that never presented itself. It was still full of the empty chocolate cups of dark, fluted paper. In the wintertime I would sometimes go into the cold dining room and sniff at the cups, inhaling their smell of artifice and luxury; I would read again the descriptions on the map provided on the inside of the box-top: hazelnut, creamy nougat, Turkish delight, golden toffee, peppermint cream.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“I saw how the forms of love might be maintained with a condemned person but with the love in fact measured and disciplined, because you have to survive. It could be done so discreetly that the object of such care would not suspect, any more than she would suspect the sentence of death itself.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“These are not sentimental keepsakes. She never looks at them, and often forgets what she has there. They are not booty, they don't have ritualistic significance. She does not take something every time she goes to Gordon's house, or every time she stays over, or to mark what she might call memorable visits. She doesn't do it in a daze and she doesn't seem to be under a compulsion. She just takes something, every now and then, and puts it away in the dark of the old tobacco tin, and more or less forgets about it.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“It would be better to think that time had soured and thinned and made commonplace a brew that used to sparkle, that difficulties had altered us both, and not for the better.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“Now I no longer believe that people’s secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize. I don’t believe so.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“My sister and I didn’t know what that meant either but we were not equal to two questions in a row. And I knew that wasn’t what rape meant anyway; it meant something dirty. “Purse. Purse stolen,” said my mother in a festive but cautioning tone. Talk in our house was genteel.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“There is a limit to the amount of misery and disarray you will put up with, for love, just as there is a limit to the amount of mess you can stand around a house. You can’t know the limit beforehand, but you will know when you’ve reached it. I believe this.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“We showed Dennis the gully and told him this was a typical old Queensland house with the high tongue-and-groove walls and the ventilation panels over the doors filled with graceful carved vines. He did not look at anything with much interest, but talked about China, where he had just been. X said afterwards that Dennis always talked about the last place he’d been and the last people he’d seen, and never seemed to notice anything, but that he would probably be talking about us, and describing this place, to the next people he had dinner with, in the next city. He said that Dennis spent most of his life travelling, and talking about it, and that he knew a lot of people just well enough that when he showed up somewhere he had to be asked to dinner.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“even if she’s faking, it shows she wants to feel something, doesn’t it, oughtn’t decent people to help her?”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“Afflictions sore long time she bore,
Physicians were in vain,
Till God did please to give her ease,
And waft her from her Pain."
"Waft," I said. "That sounds nice."
Then I felt something go over me - a shadow, a chastening. I heard the silly sound of my own voice against the truth of the lives laid down here. Lives pressed down, like layers of rotting fabric, disintegrating dark leaves. The old pain and privation. How strange, indulged, and culpable they would find us - three middle-aged people still stirred up about love, or sex. (p. 196)”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“Dorothy,” said my mother, shifting gears with an angry little spurt, and we cleared the top of the hill,”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“Ora non credo piú che la gente abbia segreti precisi e comunicabili, né sentimenti esuberanti e facili da riconoscere. Non ci credo piú.”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter

“for me to say.” He smiled; he shook his head. “I don’t”
― Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter