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I began to understand that there were certain talkers--certain girls--whom people liked to listen to, not because of what they, the girls, had to say, but because of the delight they took in saying it. A delight in themselves, a shine on their faces, a conviction that whatever they were telling about was remarkable and that they themselves could not help but give pleasure. There might be other people--people like me--who didn't concede this, but that was their loss. And people like me would never be the audience these girls were after, anyway.

I began to understand that there were certain talkers--certain girls--whom people liked to listen to, not because of what they, the girls, had to say, but because of the delight they took in saying it. A delight in themselves, a shine on their faces, a conviction that whatever they were telling about was remarkable and that they themselves could not help but give pleasure. There might be other people--people like me--who didn't concede this, but that was their loss. And people like me would never be the audience these girls were after, anyway.

Approximate author period: c. 1950 AD · modern

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Alice Munro
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1950 AD · modern
Approximate author-period evidence for Alice Munro: documented activity in 1950. Wikidata Q234819, inspected 2026-10-08. Not a quotation composition date or independent verification of attribution. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q234819 (accessed 2026-10-08).
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 87029; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.