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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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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
Almost
Veneer
Belief
Personalities
Times
Wears
Family
Revealed
True
Vacation
Great
Thin
Long
Stress
Personality

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I delight in what I fear.
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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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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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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 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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I can't help it when people are frightened, says Merricat. I always want to frighten them more.
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Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.
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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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The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a Bendix washer would amaze you.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Oh Constance, we are so happy.
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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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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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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.
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