Shirley Jackson Quotes & Sayings

I thought that we had somehow not found our way back correctly through the night, that we had somehow lost ourselves and come back through the wrong gap in time, or the wrong door, or the wrong fairy tale. — Shirley Jackson

During all of dinner the singing went on upstairs, and no one said a word. — Shirley Jackson

I live a mad, abandoned life, draped in a shawl and going from garret to garret. — Shirley Jackson

Everything is worse ... if you think something is looking at you. — Shirley Jackson

We have grown to trust blindly in our senses of balance and reason, and I can see where the mind might fight wildly to preserve its own familiar stable patterns against all evidence that it was leaning sideways. — Shirley Jackson

A thought of the world swept over her, of people living around her, singing, dancing, laughing; it seemed unexpectedly and joyfully that in all this great world of the city there were a thousand places where she might go and live in deep happiness, among friends who were waiting for her here in the stirring crowds of the city. — Shirley Jackson

Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil. — Shirley Jackson

I clear breakfast at ten o'clock. I set on lunch at one. Dinner I set on at six. It's ten o'clock. — Shirley Jackson

Perhaps the village was really a great game board, with the squares neatly marked out, and I had been moved past the square which read 'Fire; return to Start,' and was now on the last few squares, with only one move to go to reach home. — Shirley Jackson

(an early dust-flap biography called her "a practicing amateur witch, — Shirley Jackson

Everything that makes the world like it is now will be gone. We'll have new rules and new ways of living. Maybe there'll be a law not to live in houses, so then no one can hide from anyone else, you see. — Shirley Jackson

It is really an instinct, the knack of dealing with irrational people, Natalie was thinking; I suppose that any mind like mine, which is so close, actually, to the irrational and so tempted by it, is able easily to pass the dividing line between rational and irrational and communicate with someone drunk, or insane, or asleep. — Shirley Jackson

Although she would sooner have given up thinking than eating, she resented being pushed into depriving herself of either. — Shirley Jackson

My grandfather was an architect, and his father, and his father; one of them built houses only for millionaires in California, and that was where the family wealth came from, and one of them was certain that houses could be made to stand on the sand dunes of San Francisco, and that was where the family wealth went. — Shirley Jackson

I sort of thought that maybe people had to talk that way, sort of saying the same things over and over because that way they can get along together without thinking." She stopped and thought. Why I was so worried," she said, "was because if people didn't say those damn things over and over, then they wouldn't talk to each other at all. — Shirley Jackson

Bow all your heads to our adored Mary Katherine. — Shirley Jackson

No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense. — Shirley Jackson

God! Whose hand was I holding? — Shirley Jackson

I don't like the younger sister,' Theodora said. 'First she stole her sister's lover, and then she tried to steal her sister's dishes. — Shirley Jackson

I'm going to put death in all their food and watch them die. — Shirley Jackson

In all the world there is not someone who does not believe something. — Shirley Jackson

She walked quickly around her one-room apartment. After more than four years in this one home she knew all its possibilities, how it could put on a sham appearance of warmth and welcome when she needed a place to hide in, how it stood over her in the night when she woke suddenly, how it could relax itself into a disagreeable unmade, badly-put-together state, mornings like this, anxious to drive her out and go back to sleep. — Shirley Jackson

None of these things bothered us excessively; we have always been a family that carries bewilderment like a banner, and odd new confusions do not actually seem to be any more bewildering than the ones we invent for ourselves; moreover, in each of these cases it was easier to believe that nothing had happened, or that it was of no importance anyway. — Shirley Jackson

I assume then, that you have no real faith in the fondness any of the rest of us may feel for you?'
'None,' said Mrs. Halloran. — Shirley Jackson

o live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill — Shirley Jackson

I disliked having a fork pointed at me and I disliked the sound of the voice never stopping; I wished he would put food on the fork and put it into his mouth and strangle himself. — Shirley Jackson

I like writing fiction better than anything, because just being a writer of fiction gives you an absolutely unassailable protection against reality; nothing is ever seen clearly or starkly, but always through a thin veil of words. — Shirley Jackson

The trees around and overhead were so thick that it was always dry inside and on Sunday morning I lay there with Jonas, listening to his stories. All cat stories start with the statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this," and I lay with my head close to Jonas and listened. There was no change coming, I thought here, only spring; I was wrong to be so frightened. The days would get warmer, and Uncle Julian would sit in the sun, and Constance would laugh when she worked in the garden, and it would always be the same. Jonas went on and on ("And then we sang! And then we sang!") and the leaves moved overhead and it would always be the same. — Shirley Jackson

I looked at the clock with the faint unconscious hope common to all mothers that time will somehow have passed magically away and the next time you look it will be bedtime. — Shirley Jackson

One of the most terrifying aspects of publishing stories and books is the realization that they are going to be read, and read by strangers. I had never fully realized this before, although I had of course in my imagination dwelt lovingly upon the thought of the millions and millions of people who were going to be uplifted and enriched and delighted by the stories I wrote. — Shirley Jackson

Her manner of dress, of speech, of doing her hair, of spending her time, had not changed since it first became apparent to a far younger Morgen that in all her life to come no one was, in all probability, going to care in the slightest how she looked, or what she did, and the minor wrench of leaving humanity behind was more than compensated for by her complacent freedom from a thousand small irritations. — Shirley Jackson

Am I walking toward something I should be running away from? — Shirley Jackson

It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. On the other hand, abstract belief is largely impossible; it is the concrete, the actuality of the cup, the candle, the sacrificial stone, which hardens belief; the statue is nothing until it cries, the philosophy is nothing until the philosopher is martyred. — Shirley Jackson

In my own experience, contacts with the big world outside the typewriter are puzzling and terrifying; I don't think I like reality very much. Principally, I don't understand people outside; people in books are sensible and reasonable, but outside there is no predicting what they will do. — Shirley Jackson

I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain of dying. I would help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs.Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true. — Shirley Jackson

People who are all alone have every right to be friends with one another.
("The Honeymoon Of Mrs. Smith" - Version 1) — Shirley Jackson

In the darkness their feet felt that they were going downhill, and each privately and perversely accused the other of taking, deliberately, a path they had followed together once before in happiness. — Shirley Jackson

Grace Paley once described the male-female writer phenomenon to me by saying, "Women have always done men the favor of reading their work, but the men have not returned the favor. — Shirley Jackson

It is not possible, I frequently think, to walk down the street as fast as you can and kick yourself at the same time. — Shirley Jackson

Perhaps the fire had destroyed everything and we would go back tomorrow and find that the past six years had been burned and they were waiting for us, sitting around the dining-room table waiting for Constance to bring them their dinner. — Shirley Jackson

In delay there lies no plenty. — Shirley Jackson

Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time when materialization was in any way hampered by the presence of books. — Shirley Jackson

Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Yorker ... [I]t does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don't you write something to cheer people up? — Shirley Jackson

Anything which begins new and fresh will finally become old and silly. The educational institution is certainly no exception to this, although training the young is by implication an art for old people exclusively, and novelty in education is allied to mutiny. Moreover, the mere process of learning is allied to mutiny. Moreover, the mere process of learning is so excruciating and so bewildering that no conceivable phraseology or combination of philosophies can make it practical as a method of marking time during what might be called the formative years. — Shirley Jackson

You're lucky you won't ever be pretty."
Harriet knew already that this would keep her heartsick for months, perhaps the rest of her life, and she said thickly, "I'm losing weight right now."
"It isn't that you're so fat," Miss Tyler said critically. "You just don't have the air of a pretty woman. All your life, for instance, you'll walk like you're fat, whether you are or not. — Shirley Jackson

That's wrong, Mrs. Winning was thinking, you mustn't ever talk about whether people like you, that's bad taste. — Shirley Jackson

Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. — Shirley Jackson

Can't you make them stop?' I asked her that day, wondering if there was anything in this woman I could speak to, if she had ever run joyfully over grass, or had watched flowers, or known delight or love. — Shirley Jackson

People like answering questions about themselves, she thought; what an odd pleasure it is. I would answer anything right now. "What — Shirley Jackson

The least Charles could have done,' Constance said, considering seriously, 'was shoot himself through the head in the driveway. — Shirley Jackson

When we had neatened the upstairs rooms we came downstairs together, carrying our dustcloths and the broom and dustpan and mop like a pair of witches walking home. — Shirley Jackson

Well, she asked, how do you gentlemen like living in a haunted house?
It's perfectly fine, Luke said, perfectly fine. It gives me an excuse to have a drink in the middle of the night. — Shirley Jackson

I had made sure of what to say to him before I came to the table. 'The Amanita phalloides,' I said to him, 'holds three different poisons. There is amanitin, which works slowly and is most potent. There is phalloidin, which acts at once, and there is phallin, which dissolves red corpuscles, although it is the least potent. The first symptoms do not appear until seven to twelve hours after eating, in some cases not before twenty-four or even forty hours. The symptoms begin with violent stomach pains, cold sweat, vomiting
— Shirley Jackson

Morgan had been, for a very long time, the most remarkable object in her own landscape, and anything stranger than herself was, to her mind, either an obvious sham, or non-existent. — Shirley Jackson

On either side of Natalie as she walked toward her own room were doors: perhaps behind one door a girl was studying, behind another a girl was crying, behind a third a girl was turning uneasily in her sleep. Behind a certain definite door downstairs Anne and Vicki sat, laughing and speaking in loud voices whatever they chose to say; behind other doors girls lifted their heads at Natalie's footsteps, turned, wondered, and went back to their work. I wish I were the only person in all the world, Natalie thought, with a poignant longing, thinking then that perhaps she was, after all. — Shirley Jackson

Say Morg
you mind if I use the rest of your bath salts? There's only a little left. — Shirley Jackson

When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry. — Shirley Jackson

When I was a child," Theodora said lazily, "'
many years ago,' Doctor, as you put it so tactfully
I was whipped for throwing a brick through a greenhouse roof. I remember I thought about if for a long time, remembering the whipping but remembering also the lovely crash, and after thinking about it very seriously I went out and did it again. — Shirley Jackson

The food comes from the ground and cant' be permitted to stay there and rot; something has to be done with it. — Shirley Jackson

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain, said Lord Byron, — Shirley Jackson

Journeys end in lovers meeting — Shirley Jackson

Those crazy physicists that spend all day cooking themselves under an atomic reactor and all night writing stories for Weird World have done it. Spoiled my day completely. One of those idiots has hung the world up like a celluloid ball in an airstream. — Shirley Jackson

In ten years I will be a beautiful charming lovely lady writer without any husband or children but lots of lovers and everyone will read the books I write and want to marry me but I will never marry any of them. I will have lots of money and jewels too. — Shirley Jackson

Today my winged horse is coming and I am carrying you off to the moon and on the moon we will eat rose petals. — Shirley Jackson

She brought herself away from the disagreeably clinging thought by her usual method - imagining the sweet sharp sensation of being burned alive. — Shirley Jackson

And we held each other in the dark hall and laughed, with the tears running down our cheeks and echoes of our laughter going up the ruined stairway to the sky.
'I am so happy,' Constance said at last, gasping. 'Merricat, I am so happy.'
'I told you that you would like it on the moon. — Shirley Jackson

It was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it. The houses and the stores seemed to have been set up in contemptuous haste to provide shelter for the drab and the unpleasant. — Shirley Jackson

Eleanor Vance was thirty-two years old when she came to Hill House. The only person in the world she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister. She disliked her brother-in-law and her five-year-old niece, and she had no friends. — Shirley Jackson

We couldn't even hear you, in the night ...
No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one else will come any nearer than that."
"I know," Eleanor said tiredly.
"In the night," Mrs. Dudley said, and smiled outright. "In the dark," she said.. — Shirley Jackson

You never know what you are going to want until you see it clearly. — Shirley Jackson

Our house is old, and noisy, and full. when we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; I expect that when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily half a million books; we also own assorted beds and tables and chairs and rocking horses and lamps and doll dresses and ship models and paint brushes and literally thousands of socks. — Shirley Jackson

At my age an hour's reading before bedtime is essential, and I wisely brought Pamela with me. If any of you has trouble sleeping, I will read aloud to you. I never yet knew anyone who could not fall asleep with Richardson being read aloud to him. — Shirley Jackson

Nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them, each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question-as "Do you love me?" -could never be answered or forgotten. They walked slowly, meditating, wondering, and the path sloped down from their feet and they followed, walking side by side in the most extreme intimacy of expectation; their feinting and hesitation done with, they could only await passively for resolution. Each knew, almost within a breath, what the other was thinking and wanting to say; each of them almost wept for the other. They perceived at the same moment the change in the path and each knew then the other's knowledge of it; Theodora took Eleanor's arm and, afraid to stop, they moved on slowly, close together, and ahead of them the path widened and blackened and curved. — Shirley Jackson

A pretty sight, a lady with a book. — Shirley Jackson

It was probable that everyone on Pepper Street knew that Miss Fielding and Mr. Donald were, oddly, friends, but it is certain that no one was particularly interested in it. Both Miss Fielding and Mr. Donald were so exactly the sort of people who want to hide, that the neighborhood was only thankful to have them hiding together, instead of intruding their modesty on busier people. — Shirley Jackson

Perhaps - and this was her most persistent thought, the thought that stayed with her and came suddenly to trouble her at odd moments, and to comfort her - suppose, actually, she were not Natalie Waite, college girl, daughter to Arnold Waite, a creature of deep lovely destiny; suppose she were someone else? — Shirley Jackson

When shall we live if not now? — Shirley Jackson

My ambitions for you are slowly being realised, and, even though you are unhappy, console yourself with the thought that it was part of my plan for you to be unhappy for a while. The fact that you associate intimately with girls who do not care for the things you do should strengthen your own artistic integrity and fortify you against the world; remember, Natalie, your enemies will always come from the same place your friends do. — Shirley Jackson

She disinterred the wickedness in normality, cataloguing the ways conformity and repression tip into psychosis, persecution, and paranoia, into cruelty and its masochistic, injury-cherishing twin. Like — Shirley Jackson

I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin ... — Shirley Jackson

Why don't you grow up by yourself? — Shirley Jackson

Mrs. Arnold," the doctor said, coming around the desk, "we're not going to help things any this way."
"What is going to help?" Mrs. Arnold said. "Is everyone really crazy but me?"
"Mrs. Arnold," the doctor said severely, "I want you to get hold of yourself. In a disoriented world like ours today, alienation from reality frequently--"
"Disoriented," Mrs. Arnold said. She stood up. "Alienation," she said. "Reality." Before the doctor could stop her she walked to the door and opened it. "Reality," she said, and went out. — Shirley Jackson

When they were silent for a moment the quiet weight of the house pressed down from all around them. — Shirley Jackson

I took everybody, including the dog, for a ride, and we went around the block four or five times, congratulating one another upon our new mobility. I discovered that my former casual attitude of timid acquiescence was not consistent with someone who could drive a car, so I fell gradually into a new personality, swashbuckling and brazen, with a cigarette usually hanging out of one corner of my mouth because I had to keep both hands on the wheel. — Shirley Jackson

I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have little house all by myself on the moon. — Shirley Jackson

Though she teased at explanations of sorcery in both her life and in her art (an early dust-flap biography called her "a practicing amateur witch," and — Shirley Jackson

Where did he go, your father?'

'Africa.'

'What for?'

'To shoot lions, of course.'

'What on Earth for?' said Mrs. Willow blankly.

'Some people shoot lions,' the girl said pleasantly, 'and some people do not shoot lions. My father is one of the people who do. — Shirley Jackson

She was well away from the city now, watching for the turning onto Route 39, that magic thread of road Dr. Montague had chosen for her, out of all the roads in the world, to bring her safely to him and to Hill House; no other road could lead her from where she was to where she wanted to be. — Shirley Jackson

People," the doctor said sadly, "are always so anxious to get things out into the open where they can put a name to them, even a meaningless name, so long as it has something of a scientific ring. — Shirley Jackson

February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back any air of summer. — Shirley Jackson

Around her the trees and wild flowers, with that oddly courteous air of natural things suddenly interrupted in their pressing occupations of growing and dying, turned toward her with attention, as though, dull and imperceptive as she was, it was still necessary for them to be gentle to a creation so unfortunate as not to be rooted in the ground, forced to go from one place to another, heart-breakingly mobile. — Shirley Jackson

I can't help it when people are frightened," says Merricat. "I always want to frighten them more. — Shirley Jackson

We believed optimistically that Laurie was a reformed character. I told my husband, on the last day of Laurie's confinement, that actually one good scare like that could probably mark a child for life, and my husband pointed out that kids frequently have an instinctive desire to follow the good example rather than the bad, once they find out which is which. We agreed that a good moral background and thorough grounding in the Hardy Boys would always tell in the long run.
("Arch-Criminal") — Shirley Jackson

Slowly the pattern of our days grew, and shaped itself into a happy life. — Shirley Jackson

Fear and guilt are sisters; — Shirley Jackson

I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask the Best Western manager to give me a job. I have cleaned homes. — Shirley Jackson

Some of the people in the village had real faces that I knew and could hate individually; Jim — Shirley Jackson

What are you reading, my dear? A pretty sight, a lady with a book. — Shirley Jackson

There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out. — Shirley Jackson

Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children. — Shirley Jackson