A Wilderness Station Quotes

“I actually had a long career as a flirt ahead of me. It’s quite a natural behaviour, once the loss of love makes you give up your ideas of marriage.”
― Alice Munro, A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968-1994

“Not much to her credit to go through her life thinking, Well, good, now that's over, that's over. What was she looking forward to, what bonus was she hoping to get, when this, and this, and this, was over?

Freedom––or not even freedom. Emptiness, a lapse of attention. It seemed all the time that she was having to provide a little more––in the way of attention, enthusiasm, watchfulness––than she was sure she had. She was straining, hoping not to be found out. Found to be as cold at heart as that Old Norse, Sophie.”
― Alice Munro, A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968-1994

“Then he said the funny thing was the old man himself had left home when he was a kid, after a fight with his own father. The father lit into him for using the wheelbarrow.

"It was this way. They always carried the feed to the horses, pail by pail. In the winter, when the horses were in the stalls. So my father took the notion to carry it to them in the wheelbarrow. Naturally it was a lot quicker. But he got beat. For laziness. That was the way they were, you know. Any change of any kind was a bad thing. Efficiency was just laziness, to them. That's the peasant thinking for you.”
― Alice Munro, A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968-1994

“What made you wanted was nothing you did, it was something that you had, and how could you ever tell whether you had it?”
― Alice Munro, A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968-1994