The Bird's Nest

by Shirley Jackson

No one ever remembers just a bad thing, they remember all around it, all that happened before it and after it,

Other people, she had learned, were frequently uneasy and uncertain, lost their way or their money, were nervous at being approached by strangers or wary of officials;

let my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minutes, and see if he does not find himself suddenly not a compact human being at all, but only a consciousness on a sea of sound and touch; it is only with the eyes open that a corporeal form returns, and assembles itself firmly around the hard core of sight.

What about blind People?

driven by anger into outrage and repudiation. We are all measured, good or evil, by the wrong we do to others;

The kind of a place where they play croquet. And wear brooches made out of the hair of all their dead friends.”

She was watching Aunt Morgen carefully, looking at the big earnest ugly face and the false little smile and the mouth still a little open, and she thought, people shouldn’t ever look closely at one another, they’re not like pictures.

“Each life, I think,” said the doctor, “asks the devouring of other lives for its own continuance; the radical aspect of ritual sacrifice, the performance of a group, its great step ahead, was in organization; sharing the victim was so eminently practical.”