Quotes from Shirley Jackson

He seemed about to go on in this strain, which was a favorite of his, but then recollected himself, and said wryly, I reveal myself more with every word. I am honest, Natalie, and sometimes ashamed of it. I always am, when I'm honest, Natalie said. Are you? he asked with interest. Do you know when you're being honest? Usually, Natalie said. If I'm surprised at myself for saying it thinking it, it's honest.

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.

Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books.

She meant to savor each turn of her traveling, loving the road and the trees and the houses and the small ugly towns, teasing herself with the notion that she might take it into her head to stop just anywhere and never leave again.

I thought 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.

Now what was here, she wondered, what was here and is gone, or what was going to be here and never came?

Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone

People leave this town, he said. They don't come here.

Stuff yourself very full of kippers," Luke said. "Then it will be impossible to feel anything at all.

They made houses so oddly back when Hill House was built, she thought; they put towers and turrets and buttresses and wooden lace on them, even sometimes Gothic spires and gargoyles; nothing was ever left undecorated.

Blackwoods had always lived in our house, and kept their things in order; as soon as a new Blackwood wife moved in, a place was found for her belongings, and so our house was built up with layers of Blackwood property weighting it, and keeping it steady against the world.

Jonas, I told him, you are not to listen any more to Cousin Charles, and Jonas regarded me in wide-eyed astonishment, that I should attempt to make decisions for him.

She shivered and thought, the words coming freely into her mind, Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once.

I will not put a name to what has none.

It's the home I've always dreamed of, Theodora said. A little hideaway where I can be alone with my thoughts. Particularly if my thoughts happened to be about murder or suicide or-

Hill House went dancing,' Theodora said, 'taking us along a mad midnight fling. At least I think it was dancing; it might have been turning somersaults.

Abandoning a lifelong belief that to name happiness is to dissipate it, she smiled at herself in the mirror and told herself silently, You are happy, Eleanor, you have finally been given a part of your measure of happiness

Nessun organismo vivente può mantenersi a lungo sano di mente in condizioni di assoluta realtà

A person angry, or laughing, or terrified, or jealous, will go stubbornly on into extremes of behavior impossible at another time;

perhaps Charles and money found each other no matter how far apart they were, or perhaps Charles was engaged in systematically digging up every inch of our land.

Flowers under glass," Luke said. "Tassels. I am beginning to fancy this house.

People have to live and die somewhere, after all

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.

It was an unpleasant business, like all family quarrels, and as in all family quarrels incredibly harsh and cruel things were said on either side.