Top 350 Shirley Jackson Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Right?” he said. “I think we are all incredibly silly to stay. I think that an atmosphere like this one can find out the flaws and faults and weaknesses in all of us, and break us apart in a matter of days. We have only one defense, and that is running away. At least it can’t follow us, can it? When we feel ourselves endangered we can leave, just as we came. And,” he added dryly, “just as fast as we can go.”

— Shirley Jackson

202. “Das ist zu viel, dachte sie, ich leiste Verzicht auf dieses Selbst, danke ab, gebe freiwillig ab, was ich sowieso nie haben wollte; was es auch von mir will, kann es haben.”

— Shirley Jackson

203. “She could not remember ever being truly happy in her adult life; her years with her mother had been built up devotedly around small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair.”

— Shirley Jackson

204. “I am walking on their bodies, I thought, we are having lunch in the garden and Uncle Julian is wearing his shawl.”

— Shirley Jackson

205. “Mary Katherine must never be punished. Must never be sent to bed without her dinner. Mary Katherine will never allow herself to do anything inviting punishment.”

— Shirley Jackson

206. “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.”

— Shirley Jackson

207. “Eternal damnation is the lot of mankind; neither tears, nor reparation, can undo Man’s heritage of sin.”

— Shirley Jackson

208. “Hugh Crain,” Theodora said, “you were a dirty old man, and you made a dirty old house and if you can still hear me from anywhere I would like to tell you to your face that I genuinely hope you will spend eternity in that foul horrible picture and never stop burning for a minute.”

— Shirley Jackson

209. “I think we are only afraid of ourselves,” the doctor said slowly. “No,” Luke said. “Of seeing ourselves clearly and without disguise.”

— Shirley Jackson

210. “I am going to put death in all their food and watch them die.” Constance stirred, and the leaves rustled. “The way you did before?” she asked. It had never been spoken of between us, not once in six years. “Yes,” I said after a minute, “the way I did before.”

— Shirley Jackson

211. “Use all the tools at your disposal. The language is infinitely flexible, and your use of it should be completely deliberate. Never forget the grotesque effect of the absolutely wrong words.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

213. “I assure you,” the doctor said, “that Hill House will be quiet tonight. There is a pattern to these things, as though psychic phenomena were subject to laws of a very particular sort.”

— Shirley Jackson

214. “Sing before breakfast you’ll cry ’before night.”

— Shirley Jackson

215. “It was going to happen sooner or later, in any case,” Eleanor said. “But of course no matter when it happened it was going to be my fault.”

— Shirley Jackson

216. “I don’t stay after I set out dinner,” Mrs. Dudley went on. “Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes.”

— Shirley Jackson

217. “You know,” Theodora said slowly, “up until the last minute – when I got to the gates, I guess – I never really thought there would be a Hill House. You don’t go around expecting things like this to happen.” “But some of us go around hoping,” Eleanor said.”

— Shirley Jackson

218. “Abandoning a lifelong belief that to name happiness is to dissipate it, she smiled at herself in the mirror and told herself silently, You are happy, Eleanor, you have finally been given a part of your measure of happiness.”

— Shirley Jackson

219. “I am home, I am home, she thought; now to climb.”

— Shirley Jackson

220. “Now I will be heard, and when I choose to be heard, the lowest legions of hell may turn in vain to silence me and when I choose to speak not all the winds of earth can drown my voice.”

— Shirley Jackson

221. “Luke,” she asked, going slowly for fear of ridicule, “why do people want to talk to each other? I mean, what are the things people always want to find out about other people?”

— Shirley Jackson

222. “Her eyes hurt with tears against the screaming blackness of the path and the shuddering whiteness of the trees, and she thought, with a clear intelligent picture of the words in her mind, burning, Now I am really afraid.”

— Shirley Jackson

223. “If you don’t like my peaches, don’t shake my tree.”

— Shirley Jackson

224. “I will relinquish my possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all; whatever it wants of me it can have.”

— Shirley Jackson

225. “Change layover the stairs and the kitchen and the garden like fog.”

— Shirley Jackson

226. “Perhaps it has us now, this house, perhaps it will not let us go.”

— Shirley Jackson

227. “The Amanita phalloides... holds three different poisons. There is amanitin, which works slowly and is most potent. There is phalloidin, which acts at once, and there is phallin, which dissolves red corpuscles, although it is the least potent. The first symptoms do not appear until seven to twelve hours after eating, in some cases not before twenty-four or even forty hours. The symptoms begin with violent stomach pains, cold sweat, vomiting-.”

— Shirley Jackson

228. “Nothing in this house moves until you look away, and then you just catch something from the corner of your eye.”

— Shirley Jackson

229. “I thought,” Eleanor said carefully, “that I might even look around. Old houses are usually cheap, you know, and it’s fun to make them over.” “Not around here,” the girl said. “Then,” Eleanor said, “there are no old houses around here? Back in the hills?” “Nope.” The man rose, taking change from his pocket, and spoke for the first time. “People leave this town,” he said. “They don’t come here.”

— Shirley Jackson

230. “The journey itself was her positive action, her destination vague, unimagined, perhaps nonexistent. She meant to savor each turn of her traveling, loving the road and the trees and the houses and the small ugly towns, teasing herself with the notion that she might take it into her head to stop just anywhere and never leave again.”

— Shirley Jackson

231. “The weather falls more gently on some places than on others, the world looks down more paternally on some people. Some spots are proverbially warm, and keep, through falling snow, their untarnished reputations as summer resorts; some people are automatically above suspicion.”

— Shirley Jackson

232. “Maybe you’ll get onto the other side of that mirror in the new clean world. Maybe you’ll look through from the other side and see this world again and go around crying that you wish some big thing would happen and wipe out that one and send you back here. Like I keep trying to tell you, it doesn’t matter which world you’re in.”

— Shirley Jackson

233. “Eleanor Vance was thirty-two years old when she came to Hill House. The only person in the world she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister.”

— Shirley Jackson

234. “Seit dem Tod ihrer Mutter war ihre Schwester der einzige Mensch auf der Welt, den sie aufrichtig hasste.”

— Shirley Jackson

235. “Eleanor, watching, thought wryly that it might sometimes be oppressive to be for long around one so immediately in tune, so perceptive, as Theodora.”

— Shirley Jackson

236. “Because Helen Clarke was ungraceful by nature, she managed to make the simple act of moving into a room and sitting down a complex ballet for three people; before Constance had quite finished speaking Helen Clarke jostled Mrs. Wright and sent Mrs. Wright sideways like a careening croquet ball off into the far corner of the room where she sat abruptly and clearly without intention upon a small and uncomfortable chair.”

— Shirley Jackson

237. “Hill House went dancing,′ Theodora said, ’taking us along a mad midnight fling. At least I think it was dancing; it might have been turning somersaults.”

— Shirley Jackson

238. “Brandy, anyone? My passion for spirits – ” “No.” Theodora giggled wildly. “Not that pun,” she said.”

— Shirley Jackson

239. “I dusted the wedding-cake trim with a cloth on the end of a broom, staggering, and looking up and pretending that the ceiling was the floor and I was sweeping, hovering busily in space looking down at my broom, weightless and flying until the room swung dizzily and I was again on the floor looking up.”

— Shirley Jackson

240. “And there were birds singing, and – oh, I wish I could remember, and make you all see how lovely it was! – and flowers, and everything was so gentle and warm and light; it is going to be so beautiful.”

— Shirley Jackson

241. “A person angry, or laughing, or terrified, or jealous, will go stubbornly on into extremes of behavior impossible at another time;.”

— Shirley Jackson

242. “Eleanor – “I plan to stay up and read for a while.” “Are you still reading Pamela?” Eleanor asked the doctor. “Volume two. I have three volumes to go, and then I shall begin Clarissa Harlowe, I think. Perhaps Luke would care to borrow – ” “No, thanks,” Luke said hastily. “I have a suitcase full of mystery stories.”

— Shirley Jackson

243. “No one ever remembers just a bad thing, they remember all around it, all that happened before it and after it, and of course, she told herself consolingly, one bad thing is probably enough.”

— Shirley Jackson

244. “Don’t do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don’t do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.”

— Shirley Jackson

245. “In any case,” the doctor said, “I will not sleep for an hour or so yet; at my age an hour’s reading before bedtime is essential, and I wisely brought Pamela with me. If any of you has trouble sleeping, I will read aloud to you. I never yet knew anyone who could not fall asleep with Richardson being read aloud to him.”

— Shirley Jackson

246. “You think we are right to stay?” “Right?” he said. “I think we are all incredibly silly to stay. I think that an atmosphere like this one can find out the flaws and faults and weaknesses in all of us, and break us apart in a matter of days.”

— Shirley Jackson

247. “She knew, of course, that he was delighting in exceeding his authority, as though once he moved to unlock the gate he would lose the little temporary superiority he thought he had.”

— Shirley Jackson

248. “The trees around and overhead were so thick that it was always dry inside and on Sunday morning I lay there with Jonas, listening to his stories. All cat stories start with the statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this,” and I lay with my head close to Jonas and listened.”

— Shirley Jackson

249. “Don’t be so afraid all the time. We never know where our courage is coming from.”

— Shirley Jackson

250. “They spoke lightly, quickly, and gave one another fast, hidden, little curious glances, each of them wondering what secret terror had been tapped in the others, what changes might show in face or gesture, what unguarded weakness might have opened the way to ruin. “Did.”

— Shirley Jackson