Shirley Jackson Quotes

Let him be wise, or let me be blind; don't let me, she hoped concretely, don't let me know too surely what he thinks of me.

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.

They saw me at once, and I thought of them rotting away and curling in pain and crying out loud; I wanted them doubled up and crying
on the ground in front of me.

Only human beings and rabid animals turn on their own kind,

Some places have already quit lotteries." Mrs. Adams said.
"Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young fools.

There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.

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.

To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defies our boundaries and illuminates our souls.

Everything is worse...if you think something is looking at you.

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.

She had never driven far alone before. The notion of dividing her lovely journey into miles and hours was silly; she saw it [...] as a passage of moments, each one new, carrying her along with them, taking her down a path of incredible novelty to a new place. The journey itself was her positive action, her destination vague, perhaps nonexistent. [...] Or she might never leave the road at all, but just hurry on and on until the wheels of the car were worn to nothing and she had come to the end of the world.

Something must be done, however. I will not have space ships landing on my lawn.

Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.

She found a small spot where the grass was soft and dry and lay down, wondering how many years it had been since she had lain on soft grass to be alone to think. Around her the trees and wild flowers, with that oddly courteous air of natural things suddenly interrupted in their pressing occupations of growing and dying, turned towards her with attention, as though, dull and imperceptive as she was, it was still necessary for them to be gentle to a creature so unfortunate as not to be rooted in the ground, forced to go from one place to another, heart-breakingly mobile. Idly Eleanor picked a wild daisy, which died in her fingers, and, lying on the grass, looked up into its dead face. There was nothing in her mind beyond an overwhelming wild happiness. She pulled at the daisy, and wondered, smiling at herself, What am I going to do? What am I going to do?

Around her the trees and wild flowers, with that oddly courteous air of natural things suddenly interrupted in their pressing occupations of growing and dying, turned toward her with attention, as though, dull and imperceptive as she was, it was still necessary for them to be gentle to a creation so unfortunate as not to be rooted in the ground, forced to go from one place to another, heart-breakingly mobile.