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

More quotes by 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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I can't help it when people are frightened, says Merricat. I always want to frighten them more.
Shirley Jackson
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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.
Shirley Jackson
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I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.
Shirley Jackson
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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?
Shirley Jackson
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All I could think of when I got a look at the place from the outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down.
Shirley Jackson
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Wear your boots if you wander today
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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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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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.
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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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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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.
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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Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven.
Shirley Jackson
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in all the world there is not someone who does not believe something.
Shirley Jackson
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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.
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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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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I would have to find something else to bury here and I wished it could be Charles.
Shirley Jackson