Literary Birthday -11 September – Jessica Mitford

Jessica Mitford was born 11 September 1917, and died 22 July 1996.

Seven Quotes

1. You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.
2. One is only really inwardly comfortable, so to speak, after one’s life has assumed some sort of shape. Not just a routine, like studying or a job or being a housewife, but something more complete than all those, which would include goals set by oneself and a circle of life-time type friends.
3. Gracious dying is a huge, macabre, and expensive joke on the American public.
4. Things on the whole are faster in America; people don’t stand for election, they run for office. If a person says he’s sick, it doesn’t mean regurgitating, it means ill. Mad means angry, not insane. Don’t ask for the left-luggage; it’s called a checkroom.
5. Picking other people’s brains is an art worth cultivating.
6. Enemies are, to me, as important as friends in my life, and when they die I mourn their passing.
7. The character and mentality of the keepers may be of more importance in understanding prisons than the character and mentality of the kept.

Jessica Mitford was an English-born author, journalist, civil rights activist and political campaigner. She was one of the famous Mitford sisters. She is the author of Hons and Rebels, The American Way of Death Revisited, and Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford.

Photograph: William Acton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jessica_Mitford,_by_William_Acton.jpg

 by Amanda Patterson

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