Quote

I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there.

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
Situation
Use
Fear
Take
Consolidate
Whole
Comprehend
Work
Scary
Make
Afraid
Always
Loved

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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.
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In ten years I will be a beautiful charming lovely lady writer without any husband or children but lots of lovers and everyone will read the books I write and want to marry me but I will never marry any of them. I will have lots of money and jewels too.
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I can't help it when people are frightened, says Merricat. I always want to frighten them more.
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I delight in what I fear.
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Oh Constance, we are so happy.
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Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.
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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.
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in all the world there is not someone who does not believe something.
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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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It watches, he added suddenly. The house. It watches every move you make.
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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.
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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.
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You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine, is it still in use? You are wondering, has it been cleaned? You may very well ask, was it thoroughly washed?
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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.
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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.
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We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.
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Fear, the doctor said, is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.
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I shall weave a suit of leaves. At once. With acorns for buttons.
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Wear your boots if you wander today
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The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a Bendix washer would amaze you.
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