7
" When I stood apart from my parents at Steve Gauley's funeral and watched them, and had this new, unpleasant feeling about them, I thought that I was understanding something about them for the first time. It was a deadly serious thing. I was understanding they were implicated. Their big, stiff, dressed-up bodies did not stand between me and sudden death, or any kind of death. They gave consent. So it seemed. They gave consent to the death of children and to my death not by anything they said or thought but by the very fact that they had made children - they had made me. They had made me, and for that reason my death - however grieved they were, however they carried on - would seem to them anything but impossible or unnatural. This was a fact, and even then I knew they were not to blame. "
― Alice Munro , The Progress of Love
9
" 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. "
― Alice Munro , The Progress of Love