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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We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.
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I shall weave a suit of leaves. At once. With acorns for buttons.
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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.
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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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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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It is only with the eyes open that a corporeal form returns, and assembles itself firmly around the hard core of sight.
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Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven.
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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.
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It watches, he added suddenly. The house. It watches every move you make.
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I delight in what I fear.
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I would have to find something else to bury here and I wished it could be Charles.
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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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Wear your boots if you wander today
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Oh Constance, we are so happy.
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It was one of those winter days that suddenly dream of spring, when the sky is blue and soft and clear, and the wind has dropped its voice and whispers instead of screaming, and the sun is out and the trees look surprised, and over everything there is the faintest, palest tint of green.
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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.
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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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All cat stories start with this statement: My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...
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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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I can't help it when people are frightened, says Merricat. I always want to frighten them more.
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