Shirley Jackson Quotes

Quotes about:

• The sight of one's own heart is degrading; people are not meant to look inward - that's why they've been given bodies, to hide their souls.

  Shirley Jackson

  Heart, Sight, People

  32 Copy quote

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

  Shirley Jackson

  Life, Reality, Long

  Shirley Jackson (2013). “The Haunting of Hill House”, p.34, Penguin

  76 Copy quote

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

  Shirley Jackson

  Hurt, Writing, Long

  56 Copy quote

• I delight in what I fear.

  Shirley Jackson

  Delight

  35 Copy quote

• Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?

  Shirley Jackson

  Running, Running Away, Should

  Shirley Jackson (2009). “Just an Ordinary Day: Stories”, p.161, Bantam

  24 Copy quote

• I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.

  Shirley Jackson

  Stories, Village, Violence

  Shirley Jackson (2008). “The Lottery”, p.22, The Creative Company

  33 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shirley Jackson

  Scary, Use, Situation

  36 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shirley Jackson

  Fighting, Yield, Doctors

  Shirley Jackson (2006). “The Haunting of Hill House”, p.110, Penguin

  38 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shirley Jackson

  Dream, Wall, Reality

  Shirley Jackson (2006). “The Haunting of Hill House”, p.19, Penguin

  50 Copy quote

• Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time when materialization was in any way hampered by the presence of books.

  Shirley Jackson

  Book, Thinking, Way

  Shirley Jackson (2006). “The Haunting of Hill House”, p.127, Penguin

  56 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shirley Jackson

  Morning, Coffee, Believe

  14 Copy quote

• Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Yorker … [I]t does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don't you write something to cheer people up?

  Shirley Jackson

  Cheer, Dad, Writing

  Shirley Jackson (2013). “Come Along with Me: Classic Short Stories and an Unfinished Novel”, p.114, Penguin

  53 Copy quote

• We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.

  Shirley Jackson

  Summer, Spring, Fall

  30 Copy quote

• In the country of the story the writer is king.

  Shirley Jackson

  Country, Kings, Stories

  Shirley Jackson (2013). “Come Along with Me: Classic Short Stories and an Unfinished Novel”, p.128, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.

  Shirley Jackson

  Book, Writing, Parent

  11 Copy quote

• A pretty sight, a lady with a book.

  Shirley Jackson

  Book, Sight

  Shirley Jackson (2010). “Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches”

  15 Copy quote

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

  Shirley Jackson

  Fear, Stranger, Poor

  7 Copy quote

• Today my winged horse is coming and I am carrying you off to the moon and on the moon we will eat rose petals.

  Shirley Jackson

  Horse, Moon, Rose

  Shirley Jackson (2010). “Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches”

  7 Copy quote

• It has long been my belief that in times of great stress, such as a 4-day vacation, the thin veneer of family wears off almost at once, and we are revealed in our true personalities.

  Shirley Jackson

  Stress, Vacation, Long

  21 Copy quote

• No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense.

  Shirley Jackson

  Mind, Defense, Armor

  Shirley Jackson (1987). “The haunting of Hill House”, Penguin Group USA

  7 Copy quote

• in all the world there is not someone who does not believe something.

  Shirley Jackson

  Believe, Doe, World

  Shirley Jackson (2014). “The Sundial”, p.25, Penguin

  13 Copy quote

• I shall weave a suit of leaves. At once. With acorns for buttons.

  Shirley Jackson

  Buttons, Acorns, Suits

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shirley Jackson

  Book, Home, Sky

  Shirley Jackson (2010). “Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches”

  22 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shirley Jackson

  Wall, Doors, House

  Shirley Jackson (2006). “The Haunting of Hill House”, p.19, Penguin

  37 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shirley Jackson

  Fun, Thinking, Watches

  Shirley Jackson (2006). “The Haunting of Hill House”, p.43, Penguin

  13 Copy quote

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