“She thought back to what he had said. /I could make you very happy./ It was something men said then, when they were trying to persuade you, and that was what they meant. It seemed rash and sweeping to her, dazzling but *presumptuous*. She had to try to see herself, then, as somebody who could be /made happy/. The whole worrying, striving, complicated bundle of her -- was that something that could just be picked up and /made happy/?”

Canadian short story writer, Nobel Prize in Literature

Alice Munro was a Canadian short story writer, best known for her formally intricate fiction and for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Her stories often move back and forth across time, with closely linked cycles that build into a larger whole. She is widely associated with the short story form, and her work is noted for its careful structure and layered sense of memory.