Shirley Jackson Quotes

Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven.

It’s not nice to think of children growing up like mushrooms, in the dark.

Around the house, my head deep in a pillowcase or the oven, my eyes focused on that supernatural nea...

I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have little house all by myself on the moon.

Name?" the desk clerk said to me politely, her pencil poised."Name," I said vaguely. I remembered, a...

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

I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask the Be...

Anything which begins new and fresh will finally become old and silly. The educational institution i...

I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a sit...

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

I delight in what I fear.

Mrs. Arnold," the doctor said, coming around the desk, "we're not going to help things any this way....

In the country of the story the writer is king.

On either side of Natalie as she walked toward her own room were doors: perhaps behind one door a gi...

Poor things, she thought - do they have to spend all this energy just to surround me? It seemed piti...

I sort of thought that maybe people had to talk that way, sort of saying the same things over and ov...

...very lonely and, often, very unhappy, with the poignant misery that comes to lonely people who lo...

People who are all alone have every right to be friends with one another.("The Honeymoon Of Mrs. Smi...

We believed optimistically that Laurie was a reformed character. I told my husband, on the last day ...

I suppose the mothers of most twelve-year-old boys live with the uneasy conviction that their sons a...

In my own experience, contacts with the big world outside the typewriter are puzzling and terrifying...

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at ...

My dear, how can I make you perceive that there is no danger where there is nothing but love and und...

None of these things bothered us excessively; we have always been a family that carries bewilderment...

Far and away the greatest menace to the writer—any writer, beginning or otherwise—is the reader. The...

The children around our house have a saying that everything is either true, not true, or one of Moth...

Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow th...

I looked at the clock with the faint unconscious hope common to all mothers that time will somehow h...

Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time ...

Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable pat...

We have grown to trust blindly in our senses of balance and reason, and I can see where the mind mig...

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even la...

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even la...

My dear, how can I make you perceive that there is no danger where there is nothing but love and und...

I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny ...

When they were silent for a moment the quiet weight of the house pressed down from all around them.

Not one of us, even after last night, can say the word "ghost" without a littleinvoluntary smile. No...

Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watch...

I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the ...

Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her m...

...Don't be surprised, and I say it darkly, do not be surprised if you lose your Luke in this cause;...

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even la...

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.

She wants her cup of stars.

Tell me something that only I will ever know, was perhaps what she wanted to ask him, or, What will ...

It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

Everything that makes the world like it is now will be gone. We'll have new rules and new ways of li...

He hated the blue platter his mother served from, and the salt and pepper shakers, which were glass ...

We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow a...

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

I'm going to put death in all their food and watch them die.

I was thinking that being a demon and a ghost must be very difficult, even for Charles; if he ever f...

When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, per...

All cat stories start with the statement: 'My mother, who was the first cat, told me this,' and I la...

All cat stories start with this statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...

The trees around and overhead were so thick that it was always dry inside and on Sunday morning I la...

The trees around and overhead were so thick that it was always dry inside and on Sunday morning I la...

I am going to put death in all their food and watch them die.

It’s not nice to think of children growing up like mushrooms, in the dark.

Around the house, my head deep in a pillowcase or the oven, my eyes focused on that supernatural nea...

I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have little house all by myself on the moon.

Name?" the desk clerk said to me politely, her pencil poised."Name," I said vaguely. I remembered, a...

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

I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask the Be...

Anything which begins new and fresh will finally become old and silly. The educational institution i...

I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a sit...

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

I delight in what I fear.

Mrs. Arnold," the doctor said, coming around the desk, "we're not going to help things any this way....

In the country of the story the writer is king.

On either side of Natalie as she walked toward her own room were doors: perhaps behind one door a gi...

Poor things, she thought - do they have to spend all this energy just to surround me? It seemed piti...

I sort of thought that maybe people had to talk that way, sort of saying the same things over and ov...

...very lonely and, often, very unhappy, with the poignant misery that comes to lonely people who lo...

People who are all alone have every right to be friends with one another.("The Honeymoon Of Mrs. Smi...

We believed optimistically that Laurie was a reformed character. I told my husband, on the last day ...

I suppose the mothers of most twelve-year-old boys live with the uneasy conviction that their sons a...

In my own experience, contacts with the big world outside the typewriter are puzzling and terrifying...

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at ...

None of these things bothered us excessively; we have always been a family that carries bewilderment...

Far and away the greatest menace to the writer—any writer, beginning or otherwise—is the reader. The...

The children around our house have a saying that everything is either true, not true, or one of Moth...

Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow th...

I looked at the clock with the faint unconscious hope common to all mothers that time will somehow h...

Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time ...

Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable pat...

We have grown to trust blindly in our senses of balance and reason, and I can see where the mind mig...

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even la...

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even la...

I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny ...

When they were silent for a moment the quiet weight of the house pressed down from all around them.

Not one of us, even after last night, can say the word "ghost" without a littleinvoluntary smile. No...

Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watch...

Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her m...

...Don't be surprised, and I say it darkly, do not be surprised if you lose your Luke in this cause;...

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even la...

Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.

She wants her cup of stars.

Tell me something that only I will ever know, was perhaps what she wanted to ask him, or, What will ...

It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.