Top 350 Shirley Jackson Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “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

252. “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

253. “Eleanor felt the room rock madly, and time as she had always known time, stop.”

— Shirley Jackson

254. “She also depicted the cruel jokes of fate and chance unfolding in an amoral universe. It’s just that instead of doing it with men and guns, she chose to write about mad, lonely girls and big, sinister houses.”

— Shirley Jackson

255. “I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the deathcup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.”

— Shirley Jackson

256. “Fancy was a liar. She had been with Aunt Fanny and dared not admit to running away. She had not been frightened, but she enjoyed teasing people weaker than herself. Not a servant, or an animal, or any child in the village near the house, would willingly go near her.”

— Shirley Jackson

257. “Poor Dr. Montague, Eleanor thought, standing aside to let the doctor take his wife into the dining room; he is so uncomfortable; I wonder how long she is going to stay. “I wonder how long she is going to stay?” Theodora whispered in her ear. “Maybe her suitcase is filled with ectoplasm,” Eleanor said hopefully. “And how long will you be able to stay?” Dr. Montague asked, sitting.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

259. “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

260. “Flowers under glass,” Luke said. “Tassels. I am beginning to fancy this house.”

— Shirley Jackson

261. “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

262. “It has enchained and destroyed its people and their lives, it is a place of contained ill will.”

— Shirley Jackson

263. “We never know where our courage is coming from.”

— Shirley Jackson

264. “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

265. “Good morning, Jonas. You are a furred lead, I think.”

— Shirley Jackson

266. “Eleanor waved back, sitting in joyful loneliness to finish her coffee while the gay stream tumbled along below her.”

— Shirley Jackson

267. “For one thing, it had suddenly come to Natalie that when people were sober they repudiated everything they had done when they were drunk, and when they were drunk they repudiated everything they had done when they were sober.”

— Shirley Jackson

268. “Only human beings and rabid animals turn on their own kind; gratuitous pain is unknown in nature.”

— Shirley Jackson

269. “When Mrs. Ferrier stepped inside our front door at one minute before three that afternoon it was perfectly clear to me without hesitation that we were not going to become fast friends.”

— Shirley Jackson

270. “I’ll tell them,’ she said, and the baby looked at me cynically.”

— Shirley Jackson

271. “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

272. “It was not possible to communicate with her because she would not abandon her coffee cup.”

— Shirley Jackson

273. “I dread that it may be only a longing for annihilation. No person who has seen his own face plain can want to live longer.”

— Shirley Jackson

274. “No one lives any nearer than the town. No one else will come any nearer than that.”

— Shirley Jackson

275. “Anything which begins new and fresh will finally become old and silly.”

— Shirley Jackson

276. “It was an act of moral strength to lift her foot and set it on the bottom step, and she thought that her deep unwillingness to touch Hill House for the first time came directly from the vivid feeling that it had been waiting for her, evil, but patient.”

— Shirley Jackson

277. “Well, Eleanor thought, staring after the taxi, there’s one person, anyway, who will be praying for me. One person anyway.”

— Shirley Jackson

278. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

280. “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

281. “Now, she thought; I may go mad, but at least I look like a lady.”

— Shirley Jackson

282. “Little Natalie, never rest until you have uncovered your essential self. Remember that. Somewhere, deep inside you, hidden by all sorts of fears and worries and petty little thoughts, is a clean pure being made of radiant colours.”

— Shirley Jackson

283. “When Jannie came home from school that afternoon she said that her teacher had put it into the class news that Jannie’s mommy and daddy were going to get a new house and Jannie would walk to school instead of taking the bus.”

— Shirley Jackson

284. “She was well away from the city now, watching for the turning onto Route 39, that magic thread of road Dr. Montague had chosen for her, out of all the roads in the world, to bring her safely to him and to Hill House; no other road could lead her from where she was to where she wanted to be.”

— Shirley Jackson

285. “Am I the public conscience? Expected always to say in cold words what the rest of them are too arrogant to recognise?”

— Shirley Jackson

286. “People leave this town,” he said. “They don’t come here.”

— Shirley Jackson

287. “It was not pleasant sitting on the porch after Tony had gone; a spot where two people have been talking, however briefly, is not after that a spot for one person to sit alone.”

— Shirley Jackson

288. “Why don’t you grow up by yourself?”

— Shirley Jackson

289. “Marble is always a shock,” she said. “It never feels like you think it’s going to. I suppose a lifesize statue looks enough like a real person to make you expect to feel skin.”

— Shirley Jackson

290. “God has given me blood to drink.”

— Shirley Jackson

291. “My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.”

— Shirley Jackson

292. “Don’t be hypnotized by the sanctity of the superficial rhythm of humdrum life, Jackson warns, for under the surface of things, people change, sometimes irrevocably, and yet they may appear unaltered.”

— Shirley Jackson

293. “She wants her cup of stars.” Eleanor.”

— Shirley Jackson

294. “Imagine, always pretending to run a world. Always imitating the sort of people they think they might be if the world were the sort of world it isn’t. Pretending to be words like ‘normal’ and ‘wholesome’ and ‘honest’ and ‘decent’ and ‘self-respecting’ and all the rest, when even the words aren’t real. Imagine, being people.”

— Shirley Jackson

295. “We have got to get a bigger house,” I said. “Don’t be silly,” my husband said, reading. “There is no bigger house.” “A new house?” said Jannie. “Can I have a room of my own?” When I went down to the grocery the next morning the grocer said he heard we were thinking of moving.”

— Shirley Jackson

296. “After all,′ said the old lady dreamily, with raindrops in her hair, ’we don’t always see ahead, into things that are going to happen.”

— Shirley Jackson

297. “Some rose petals are poisonous.”

— Shirley Jackson

298. “Well I am here, I am at the heart, I have come through the maze – where is the secret I am to learn from my many agonies? Here I am, here I am, where is my reward? What have I earned, learned, spurned?”

— Shirley Jackson

299. “There’s only one of me, and it’s all I’ve got.”

— Shirley Jackson

300. “I never yet knew anyone who could not fall asleep with Richardson being read aloud to him.”

— Shirley Jackson