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All cat stories start with this statement: My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...

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
Firsts
First
Statement
Statements
Cat
Told
Start
Mother
Stories

More quotes by Shirley Jackson

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For plain and fancy worrying, give me a new mother every time.
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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Wear your boots if you wander today
Shirley Jackson
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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.
Shirley Jackson
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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.
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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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.
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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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.
Shirley Jackson
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I delight in what I fear.
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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We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.
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
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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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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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It is only with the eyes open that a corporeal form returns, and assembles itself firmly around the hard core of sight.
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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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.
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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The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a Bendix washer would amaze you.
Shirley Jackson