I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing… - Shirley Jackson

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I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believe that a painter cannot sit down to his morning coffee without noticing what color it is, so a writer cannot see an odd little gesture without putting a verbal description to it, and ought never to let a moment go by undescribed.

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About Shirley Jackson

Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American writer known for her works of horror and mystery. Over her writing career, which spanned more than two decades, she composed six novels, two memoirs, and over 200 short stories.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Shirley Hardie Jackson
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Additional quotes by Shirley Jackson

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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Miss Fielding had no fears of ultimate survival, even in beauty. When she passed on, she would draw after her every trailing mist of herself, effacing herself so completely that even after her death, even after her bones, which she could not help, were gone, she would be a bother to no one, would intrude on no mind.

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