Quotes from Shirley Jackson

Insist on your cup of stars.

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.

The most important thing she had learned so far - and it was something to know, after only twelve hours - was that she need not pretend, always, to be competent or at home in a strange atmosphere. Other people, she had learned, were frequently uneasy and uncertain, lost their way or their money, were nervous at being approached by strangers or wary of officials.

Let my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minutes, and see if he does not find himself suddenly not a compact human being at all, but only a consciousness on a sea of sound and touch; it is only with the eyes open that a corporeal form returns, and assembles itself firmly around the hard core of sight.

Well, Eleanor thought, staring after the taxi, there's one person, anyway, who will be praying for me. One person anyway.

Change layover the stairs and the kitchen and the garden like fog.

o Human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.

Good morning, Jonas. You are a furred leaf, I think.

Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

Ghosts are real, this much I know. There are things that tie them to a place, very much like they do us. Some remain tethered to a patch of land, a time and date, the spilling of blood, a terrible crime. But there are others...others that hold on to an emotion, a drive, loss, revenge, or love. Those...they never go away.

Nothing in this house moves until you look away, and then you just catch something from the corner of your eye.

They are the children of the strangers,I told her. They have no faces. They have eyes. Pretend they are birds. They cant see us. They don't know it yet. they don't want to believe it, but they wont ever see us again.

Poor strangers, I said. They have so much to be afraid of.

I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside. "No," she said aloud, and the one word echoed.

Now I will be heard, and when I choose to be heard, the lowest legions of hell may turn in vain to silence me and when I choose to speak not all the winds of earth can drown my voice.

I have never liked the theory that poltergeists only come into houses where there are children, because I think it is simply too much for any one house to have poltergeists and children

I am walking on their bodies, I thought, we are having lunch in the garden and Uncle Julian is wearing his shawl.

Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl." ? Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

hero ("victim" might be a better word) typically hasn't got much personality beyond his intrusiveness. He's just someone inclined to put himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and to rue the consequences.

En el interior, las paredes seguían erguidas, los ladrillos se reunían ordenadamente, los pisos eran firmes y las puertas estaban cerradas sensiblemente; el silencio yacía firmemente contra la madera y la piedra de Hill House y todo lo que caminaba allí, caminaba solo.

Dr. John Montague was a doctor of philosophy; he had taken his degree in anthropology, feeling obscurely that in this field he might come closest to his true vocation, the analysis of supernatural manifestations. He was scrupulous about the use of his title because, his investigations being so utterly unscientific, he hoped to borrow an air of respectability, even scholarly authority, from his education.

the evil is the house itself, I think. It has enchained and destroyed its people and their lives, it is a place of contained ill will.

Good morning—through in a minute—I'll leave the tub filled for you

No ghost in all the long histories of ghosts has ever hurt anyone physically. The only damage done is by the victim to himself. […] 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.