Quotes About Shirley Jackson

Therefore it was not pride that took me into the village twice a week, or even stubbornness, but only the simple need for books and food.

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.

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

Eleanor, watching, thought wryly that it might sometimes be oppressive to be for long around one so immediately in tune, so perceptive, as Theodora.

fortuitous for me. This sort of tale serves, in many ways, the very same purpose as fairy tales did in our childhood: It operates as a theater of the mind in which internal conflicts are played out. In these tales we can parade the most reprehensible aspects of our being: cannibalism, incest, parricide. It allows us to discuss our anxieties and even to contemplate the experience of death in absolute safety.

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

She also depicted the cruel jokes of fate and chance unfolding in an amoral universe. It's just that instead of doing it with men and guns, she chose to write about mad, lonely girls and big, sinister houses.

The experiment with humanity is at an end, Aunt Fanny said. Splendid, Mrs. Halloran said, I was getting very tired of all of them.

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's writings are a must for aficionados of the gothic and of good literature.

Ambiguity and the horror of possibility play a part in so many of my favorite horror stories: Shirley Jackson's 'We Will Always Live in the Castle,' Mark Danielewski's 'House of Leaves,' Victor LaValle's 'Big Machine,' Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' Stewart O'Nan's 'The Speed Queen,' and so many more.

The horror genre is vast and full of brilliance. Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Herman Melville, the book of Esther. I'll happily join that list.