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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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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
Frighten
Frightened
Says
Help
Helping
Always
People

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Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.
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Wear your boots if you wander today
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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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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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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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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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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 shall weave a suit of leaves. At once. With acorns for buttons.
Shirley Jackson
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Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time when materialization was in any way hampered by the presence of books.
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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 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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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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The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a Bendix washer would amaze you.
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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Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven.
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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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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Oh Constance, we are so happy.
Shirley Jackson
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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.
Shirley Jackson
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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.
Shirley Jackson