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

I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there.

Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.

at the back of her mind the thoroughly female conviction that the best way to soothe a troubled mind is to put on comfortable shoes.