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I delight in what I fear.

Shirley Jackson

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Shirley Jackson
Age: 48 †
Born: 1916
Born: December 14
Died: 1965
Died: September 8
Author
Journalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Shirley Hardie Jackson
Delight
Fear

More quotes by Shirley Jackson

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Oh Constance, we are so happy.
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The idea of a series of items, following one another docilely, forms the only possible reasonable approach to life if you have to live it with a home and a husband and children, none of whom would dream of following one another docilely.
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Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow the humor of its basic assumption about how it is possible to teach things to children.
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All cat stories start with this statement: My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...
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Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven.
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I really think I shall commence chapter forty-four, he said, patting his hands together. I shall commence, I think, with a slight exaggeration and go on from there into an outright lie. Constance, my dear? Yes, Uncle Julian? I am going to say that my wife was a beautiful woman.
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Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.
Shirley Jackson
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February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back any air of summer.
Shirley Jackson
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It has long been my belief that in times of great stress, such as a 4-day vacation, the thin veneer of family wears off almost at once, and we are revealed in our true personalities.
Shirley Jackson
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It watches, he added suddenly. The house. It watches every move you make.
Shirley Jackson
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I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.
Shirley Jackson
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He is altogether selfish, she thought in some surprise, the only man I have ever sat and talked to alone, and I am impatient he is simply not very interesting.
Shirley Jackson
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On the moon we have everything. Lettuce, and pumpkin pie and Amanita phalloides. We have cat-furred plants and horses dancing with their wings. All the locks are solid and tight, and there are no ghosts.
Shirley Jackson
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Wear your boots if you wander today
Shirley Jackson
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We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.
Shirley Jackson
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I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains no pertinent facts.
Shirley Jackson
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We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.
Shirley Jackson
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Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Shirley Jackson
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The sight of one's own heart is degrading people are not meant to look inward - that's why they've been given bodies, to hide their souls.
Shirley Jackson
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We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved.
Shirley Jackson