Our house is old, and noisy, and full. when we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; I expect that when we finally overflo… - Shirley Jackson

"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."

In my own experience, contacts with the big world outside the typewriter are puzzling and terrifying; I don’t think I like reality very much. Principally, I don’t understand people outside; people in books are sensible and reasonable, but outside there is no predicting what they will do.

She had never driven far alone before. The notion of dividing her lovely journey into miles and hours was silly; she saw it [...] as a passage of moments, each one new, carrying her along with them, taking her down a path of incredible novelty to a new place. The journey itself was her positive action, her destination vague, perhaps nonexistent. [...] Or she might never leave the road at all, but just hurry on and on until the wheels of the car were worn to nothing and she had come to the end of the world.