Clonk, thud, a grrrr scraping sound as if some large, bony, inanimate object were being dragged against its will-- the noises finally seeped through her tight-woven concentration and took shape, as she sat working at her desk. She glanced up at the high ceiling thinking. Another one's found a mate.

-- from Open the Door (1966)

Of all her books, I think I like this one best, and so am a bit more reluctant to cut pieces loose from it for this website. This first paragraph is, for instance, genius-- simple on the face of it, but capturing everything that is to come near-complete in three quick sentences. Let me make explicit what every post in this blog implies-- you should read this woman's work. This would not be a bad place to start.

As Lucy Ramsdale said when the news reached her, "If Grace's papa could hear this, he wouldn't turn over in his grave-- he'd levitate."

--from A Dying Fall (1973)

Three years ago, when I first began painting as a hobby, I would say eagerly to strangers at parties, "You must come up and see my pictures sometime." The men to whom I addressed this invitation must have thought I was using a hand-colored variation of the old come-see-my-etchings line. Once in my apartment, they were startled to find I had been speaking literally. They were even more startled by the paintings. One or two callers recovered their voices enough to point and ask hoarsely. "wh-what's it supposed to be?" The others simply stood, like a one-man petrified forest, until they'd thought of some intelligent, critical comment, such as "Wow!" or "Wait till my analyst hears about this."

--from "Look! I'm Framed." (1949)

Franklin, Pennsylvania, where I grew up and where my parents still live, is not an especially tolerant town, nestling as it does in the beautiful hilly region so rich in oil and old-line Republicans. During the oil boom in the last century, plenty of its citizens made lush fortunes and equally lush scandals almost overnight. Part of the money still remains above the surface, although spread rather thin over most of the population of ten thousand, and concentrated in only a few choice spots. As for the scandals, they've been decently buried by well-behaved descendants, and it would take a brave dog to dig up those juicy old bones.

--from We Shook the Family Tree (1946)

The friend who told me about the onion cure for insomnia said she'd come across it while looking for a saw in Gimbel's basement. She had stopped to listen to a bald demonstrator giving a spiel about a potato peeler, and she insisted that he suddenly announced to his drifting audience, "If you have trouble sleeping at night, here's what you do." He told them to slice a large onion and make a sandwich with rye or whole-wheat bread. He warned them that white bread wouldn't do at all. This was to be taken with a glass of milk at bedtime. I asked whether the onion was to be peeled, because I was puzzled as to why a man demonstrating potato peelers would branch off into a cure for insomnia. My friend said no, not to peel the onion, just cut off a quarter-inch-thick slice with an ordinary kitchen knife. She said it had workwed miraculously for her. Her husband had complained that she reeked of onion clear across the bedroom; but she implied delicately that as I wasn't married, this was a technical drawback that needn't concern me.

from "Say 'Hemlock' and Flop"