310 Quotes by Shirley Jackson

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.

Mrs. Spencer distrusted letters on principle, because they always seemed to want to entangle her in so many small, disagreeable obligations – visits, or news of old friends she had conveniently forgotten, or family responsibilities that always had to be met quickly and without enjoyment.

It is unholy because it is heretic. It is foul. It is abominable to need something so badly that you cannot picture living without it. It is a contradiction to the condition of mankind.

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

Fear and guilt are sisters;.

Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.

The journey itself was her positive action, her destination vague, unimagined, perhaps nonexistent.

No Human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.

Someday,” she said evilly, rubbing her hands against her eyes, “I am going to get my eyes open all the time and then I will eat you and Lizzie both.