Quotessence
Home / Authors / Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllShirley JacksonThe Haunting Of Hill HouseHouseChildrenIfsHorrorLongPeopleWritingYears

Famous Shirley Jackson Quotes

“She walked quickly around her one-room apartment. After more than four years in this one home she knew all its possibilities, how it could put on a sham appearance of warmth and welcome when she needed a place to hide in, how it stood over her in the night when she woke suddenly, how it could relax itself into a disagreeable unmade, badly-put-together state, mornings like this, anxious to drive her out and go back to sleep.”

YearsStatesHomeTogetherNightWomenSleepRoomsMorningFourPossibilityNeededAppearanceWelcomeRelaxWarmthAnxiousFour YearsApartmentDisagreeable
Book:The Magic of Shirley Jackson
Create image

“I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believe that a painter cannot sit down to his morning coffee without noticing what color it is, so a writer cannot see an odd little gesture without putting a verbal description to it, and ought never to let a moment go by undescribed.”

PeopleWritingBelieveLittlesMomentsI BelieveMorningSeeingColorOughtPicksCoffeePainterOddDescriptionPensGesturesDesksMistFittingNoticingMorning Coffee
Author:Shirley Jackson
Create image

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. 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 dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.”

YearsHas BeensTwoHandsNamesBornMiddleDogLuckFingersNoiseCupsOur FamilyLengthDislikeMy SisterMaryCould Have BeenWashingEighteenWerewolfMushroomsMiddle FingerEighteen Years Old
Author:Shirley Jackson
Create image

“I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper. A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi. A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child. A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy. The lead article on the woman's page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me.”

IfsYearsChildrenMightFacesGirlFoundGivenRoomsBoysMorningNew YorkBabyBirthPaperPagesAccountsMurderCoffeeCupsPoundsArticlesMexicoTwelveTwinsSteamTaxiOhioThirteenSeventeenCoffee CupDiningReviveNew BabyDining Rooms
Book:The Magic of Shirley Jackson
Create image

“No 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 House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. 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.”

YearsLongDreamRealityMightHouseSilenceDarknessDoorsConditionsWallMetsHorrorStonesAbsolutesLaysWoodsHillsFirmSaneOrganismsBricksEightyLarksDarkness Within
Book:The Haunting of Hill House
Create image

“We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean; the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved.”

LongTodayMovingTreeFieldsOceanShadowMovedDistanceCloudsGrassBreezeBack And ForthMoving In
Book:Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches
Create image

“He is altogether selfish, she thought in some surprise, the only man I have ever sat and talked to alone, and I am impatient; he is simply not very interesting.”

MenInterestingSurpriseSelfishSatVery InterestingImpatient
Book:Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches
Create image

“All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.”

TogetherPowerfulLandStonesSurfaceTreasureTeethBuriedJewelsMarbleBelow The Surface
Book:Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches
Create image

“She had taken to wondering lately, during these swift-counted years, what had been done with all those wasted summer days; how could she have spent them so wantonly? I am foolish, she told herself early every summer, I am very foolish; I am grown up now and know the values of things. Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one's childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by.”

KnowsYearsLittlesDoneWould BeValuesCitiesWonderMorningTakenStreetsChildhoodWindColdSummerWarmFoolishTouchedMore TimeSummer DaysTime Goes ByYear OneCity Streets
Book:The Haunting of Hill House
Create image

“I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books and looking for a minute at the soft hinted green in the branches against the sky and wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village.”

BookHomeRememberWishWalksStepsSkyMinutesGreenLibraryBranchesVillage
Book:Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches
Create image

“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.”

LittlesGirlStarsWiseBraveGlassesCupsSubtleTrappedEleanorComprehending
Book:The Haunting of Hill House
Create image

“I really think I shall commence chapter forty-four," he said, patting his hands together. "I shall commence, I think, with a slight exaggeration and go on from there into an outright lie. Constance, my dear?" "Yes, Uncle Julian?" "I am going to say that my wife was a beautiful woman.”

ThinkingSaidHandsTogetherBeautifulLyingFourWifeGoes OnDearMy WifeFortyChaptersUnclesBeautiful WomenExaggerationHands Together
Book:We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Create image

“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”

WorldSpeakLanguageMoonTongueSpokesPretendingLiquidLooking DownStarlight
Book:Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches
Create image