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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“I have always loved . . . to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work,”
Jackson once said that “the first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents. . . . Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.”
Her new year’s resolution for 1934 was simpler than usual: “To be happy.”
“Knowing myself to desire so much and yet so vaguely, I catch webs of events in both hands, and pull them to me,”
“Life is such a casual thing at best, and such a messy thing at worst, that it’s a wonder more people don’t quit it than do.
Death longs to be loved by somebody who recognizes him for who—or what—he really is. He does not deceive his betrothed into committing herself to him; rather, she knows who he is and loves him anyway—exactly the fantasy of a teenager tired of “posturings,” who felt that her own mother, constantly trying to mold her in another image, did not appreciate her.
“She gave me as a parting gift the ability to face people and laugh at them, because she knew that I would need it,”
I held in my hands a dream which they tried to crush, and they failed.”
“For people who do not care, life can hold so much of interest and so much of delight, I have discovered. There is a strange charm in feeling not able to be hurt.”
“Will there ever come a break, and will there be any life to jump at the break when it comes?”
“you were just going to slip off into the water?” asked victor. “very softly,” i said. “with no more than that?” asked victor. “no more than that,” i said. “tell me,” said victor, “why didn’t you die?” “i forgot,” i said. “i went home and wrote a poem instead.”
i want you more than anything in the world and you needn’t imagine that anything you say or do is going to stop me from getting what i want, and you can’t even stop me from wanting it.
“I have . . . seldom, if ever, been as completely happy,” Shirley wrote in December. “I have been relaxing into myself. I do not feel the constant strain to be someone else.”
The idea of falling in love with Stanley frightened her: “he could break me mentally if he chose.”
“I’ll do anything you want, only don’t leave me alone without you anymore,” she implored him in an unsent letter that spring.
“for god’s sake can you think of any telepathic way by which i can get myself into your arms and stay there?”
and I didn’t even think about you, my darling. I just remembered all the times at home—even with you—that I’ve wanted something and couldn’t tell what it was. . . . Way deep inside me all the restlessness has gone away, and I could stay here from now on, even without you.
