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Quote by Shirley Jackson

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The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson's classic novel delves into the eerie and unexplainable events that take place within the walls of Hill House, a secluded and ominous mansion. The story follows a group of individuals who are invited to stay at the house to study its supposed paranormal activity, leading to a chilling and suspenseful exploration of the human psyche and the supernatural. more

Author

Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American author whose dark and unsettling stories have left a lasting impact on the horror genre. Known for her psychological insights and the way she intertwines the supernatural with everyday life, Jackson's work has been widely celebrated for its originality and depth. more

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“You see? I don’t know what ‘mature’ means, either, and you could talk all night and I still wouldn’t know. It’s all just words to me, Frank. I watch you talking and I think: Isn’t that amazing? He really does think that way; these words really do mean something to him. Sometimes it seems I’ve been watching people talk and thinking that all my life. And maybe it means there’s something awful the matter with me, but it’s true.”

“The undiscovered is not far away. It’s not something to be found eventually. It is contained within what is right in front of us. The essence of reality is being born right now. It has never existed before. Reality is constant creation and destruction, and in this constant change is something unborn and undying, something that cannot be approached through the known or the past. It isn’t seen through striving to become something based on ideals stemming from former experiences. It comes to that which is being, not striving. In this state of being in the moment, without the known, without knowing at all, with neither past nor future, is a space that is not filled with time. And in this space, the undiscovered and ever-changing moment exists—a moment containing all possibilities, the totality of existence, absolute reality. Reality is now, and in the now, we can experience the true nature of the universe and the universal mind.”

“Is it not late? A late time to be living? Are not our generations the crucial ones? For we have changed the world. Are not our heightened times the important ones? For we have nuclear bombs. Are we not especially significant because our century is? - our century and its unique Holocaust, its refugee populations, its serial totalitarian exterminations; our century and its antibiotics, silicon chips, men on the moon, and spliced genes? No, we are not and it is not. These times of ours are ordinary times, a slice of life like any other. Who can bear to hear this, or who will consider it?... Take away the bomb threat and what are we? Ordinary beads on a never-ending string. Our time is a routine twist of an improbable yarn...There must be something heroic about our time, something that lifts it above all those other times. Plague? Funny weather? Dire things are happening... Why are we watching the news, reading the news, keeping up with the news? Only to enforce our fancy - probably a necessary lie - that these are crucial times, and we are in on them. Newly revealed, and we are in the know: crazy people, bunches of them. New diseases, shifts in power, floods! Can the news from dynastic Egypt have been any different?”

“Music, this complex and mysterious act, precise as algebra and vague as a dream, this art made out of mathematics and air, is simply the result of the strange properties of a little membrane. If that membrane did not exist, sound would not exist either, since in itself it is merely vibration. Would we be able to detect music without the ear? Of course not. Well, we are surrounded by things whose existence we never suspect, because we lack the organs that would reveal them to us. [Was He Mad?]”

“Hay una realidad que demuestra la verdad de un hecho. Porque nuestra memoria y nuestros sentidos son demasiado inseguros, demasiado parciales. Incluso podemos afirmar que muchas veces es imposible discernir hasta qué punto un hecho que creemos percibir es real y a partir de qué punto sólo creemos que lo es. Así que para preservar la realidad como tal, necesitamos otra realidad -una realidad colindante- que la relativice. Pero, a su vez, esta realidad colindante necesita una base para relativizarse a sí misma. Es decir, que hay otra realidad colindante que demuestra, a su vez, que ésta es real. Y esta cadena se extiende indefinidamente dentro de nuestra conciencia y, en un cierto sentido, puede afirmarse que es a través de esta sucesión, a través de la conservación de esta cadena, como adquirimos conciencia de nuestra existencia misma. Pero si esta cadena, casualmente, se rompe, quedamos desconcertados. ¿La realidad está al otro lado del eslabón roto? ¿Está a este lado?”