Quotes from Shirley Jackson

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.

Poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of.

Fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar.

So long as you write it away regularly nothing can really hurt you.

Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea? Oh no, said Merricat, you'll poison me. Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep? Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!

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.

All I could think of when I got a look at the place from the outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down.

I wonder if I could eat a child if I had the chance.' 'I doubt if I could cook one,' said Constance.

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

I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.

I came to believe that being a private detective was the work I was meant to do.

I delight in what I fear.

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.

Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.

I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there.

Everything is worse...if you think something is looking at you.