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Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward. I feel that this is something that people may find they have to adjust to, but it’s a way of saying whatever it is that I want to say, and it sort of has to be done this way. Time is something that interests me a whole lot—past and present, and how the past appears as people change…
…I never remember being innocent. I always remember things being very complicated. Mostly I remember having a self as a child who was completely hidden from the world of adults and teachers and people around me.
"Alice Munro, in a 2001 interview in The Atlantic, on the publication of Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
