Quotes from Shirley Jackson

Don't be so afraid all the time, she said and reached out to touch Eleanor's cheek with one finger. We never know where our courage is coming from.

this was a time and a land where enchantments were swiftly made and broken

I thought," Eleanor said carefully, "that I might even look around. Old houses are usually cheap, you know, and it's fun to make them over." "Not around here," the girl said. "Then," Eleanor said, "there are no old houses around here? Back in the hills?" "Nope." The man rose, taking change from his pocket, and spoke for the first time. "People leave this town," he said. "They don't come here.

Hugh Crain," Theodora said, "you were a dirty old man, and you made a dirty old house and if you can still hear me from anywhere I would like to tell you to your face that I genuinely hope you will spend eternity in that foul horrible picture and never stop burning for a minute.

I think, for instance, that no one can really love a person who is not superior in every way.

Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once.

There is no danger where there is nothing but love and sympathetic understanding.

It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

God God," Eleanor said, flinging herself out of bed and across the room to stand shuddering in a corner, "God God—whose hand was I holding?

How weary one gets of this constant pounding, Theodora said ridiculously. Next summer, I must really go somewhere else. There are disadvantages everywhere, Like told her. In the lake regions you get mosquitoes.

They are the children of the strangers, I told her. They have no faces. They have eyes. Pretend they are birds.

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 it 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.

Brandy, anyone? My passion for spirits—" "No." Theodora giggled wildly. "Not that pun," she said.

it's such a dark day, we've got to be a little brighter than usual.

Anything you raise by the way of spirits you have to put back yourself.

There's only one of me, and it's all I've got. I hate seeing myself dissolve and slip and separate so that I'm living in one half, my mind, and I see the other half of me helpless and frantic and driven and I can't stop it, but I know I'm not really going to be hurt and yet time is so long and even a second goes on and on and I could stand any of it if I could only surrender—

No one lives any nearer than the town. No one else will come any nearer than that.

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

They spoke lightly, quickly, and gave one another fast, hidden, little curious glances, each of them wondering what secret terror had been tapped in the others, what changes might show in face or gesture, what unguarded weakness might have opened the way to ruin. "Did

In the night," Mrs. Dudley said, and smiled outright. "In the dark

A clean house is a sign of mental inferiority.

Mrs. Spencer distrusted letters on principle, because they always seemed to want to entangle her in so many small, disagreeable obligations--visits, or news of old friends she had conveniently forgotten, or family responsibilities that always had to be met quickly and without enjoyment.

To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls.

Constance stirred, and the leaves rustled. The way you did before? she asked. It had never been spoken of between us, not once in six years. Yes, I said after a minute, the way I did before.