310 Quotes by Shirley Jackson

In the country of the story the writer is king.

Is everyone really crazy but me?

My grandfather was an architect, and his father, and his father; one of them built houses only for millionaires in California, and that was where the family wealth came from, and one of them was certain that houses could be made to stand on the sand dunes of San Francisco, and that was where the family wealth went.

Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow the humor of its basic assumption about how it is possible to teach things to children....

We have grown to trust blindly in our senses of balance and reason, and I can see where the mind might fight wildly to preserve its own familiar stable patterns against all evidence that it was leaning sideways.

No ghost in all the long histories of ghosts has ever hurt anyone physically. The only damage done is by the victim to himself. […] 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.

Not one of us, even after last night, can say the word "ghost" without a littleinvoluntary smile. No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks wheremodern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor ofsuperstition and have no substitute defense.

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

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