Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see y… - Shirley Jackson

insist on your cup of stars

Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. 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.

I have a beard,' Dr. Montague said, pleased, and looked around at them with a happy beam. 'My wife,' he told them, 'likes a man to wear a beard. Many women, on the other hand, find a beard distasteful. A clean-shaven man - you'll excuse me, my boy - never looks fully dressed, my wife tells me.' He held out his glass to Luke.

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