Jessica Mitford
Jessica Mitford
Jessica Lucy Freeman-Mitfordwas an English author, journalist, civil rights activist and political campaigner, and was one of the Mitford sisters. She became an American citizen in 1944...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth11 September 1917
CountryUnited States of America
character understanding may
The character and mentality of the keepers may be of more importance in understanding prisons than the character and mentality of the kept.
wall would-be prison
Prison walls are meant not only to keep convicts in, but to keep the would-be investigator out.
ambition lexicographer firsts
Funeralese has had its ups and downs. The word 'morticians,' first used in Embalmers Monthly for February, 1895, was barred by the Chicago Tribune in 1932, 'not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven't the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly.
writing trying world
the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something about what you've been writing about. You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty.
roles prison paradox
Society created the prison in its own image; will history, with its penchant for paradox, reverse those roles?
children knowing interesting
Knowing few children of my age with whom to compare notes, I envied the children of literature to whom interesting things were always happening ...
thinking enemy important
lifelong enemies are, I think, as hard to make and as important to one's well-being as lifelong friends.
book reading years
A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.
exercise simple appreciate
[On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds.
expression unjust injustice
the prison system, inherently unjust and inhumane, is the ultimate expression of injustice and inhumanity in the society at large.
beautiful memories order
Alas, poor Yorick! How surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged and neatly dressed - transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.
objectivity objectives
Objectivity? I've always had an objective.
art people brain
Picking other people's brains is an art worth cultivating.
hands funeral victory
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Where, indeed. Many a badly stung survivor, faced with the aftermath of some relative's funeral, has ruefully concluded that the victory has been won hands down by a funeral establishment - in disastrously unequal battle.