Quote

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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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
Fight
Halfway
Willing
Yield
Fighting
Doctor
Fear
Reasonable
Cannot
Patterns
Logic
Doctors
Meet
Relinquishing

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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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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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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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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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All cat stories start with this statement: My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...
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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.
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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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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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I can't help it when people are frightened, says Merricat. I always want to frighten them more.
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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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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.
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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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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 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.
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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.
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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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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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I delight in what I fear.
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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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For plain and fancy worrying, give me a new mother every time.
Shirley Jackson