Top 350 Shirley Jackson Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “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

252. “No, she thought, you are not going to catch me so cheaply; I do not understand words and will not accept them in trade for my feelings; this man is a parrot.”

— Shirley Jackson

253. “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

254. “I thought we had somehow not found our way back correctly through the night, that we had somehow lost ourselves and come back through the wrong gap in time, or the wrong door, or the wrong fairy tale.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

256. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

261. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

263. “There is no danger where there is nothing but love and sympathetic understanding.”

— Shirley Jackson

264. “It’s the home I’ve always dreamed of,” Theodora said. “A little hideaway where I can be alone with my thoughts. Particularly if my thoughts happened to be about murder or suicide or-.”

— Shirley Jackson

265. “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

266. “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

267. “God God,” Eleanor said, flinging herself out of bed and across the room to stand shuddering in a corner, “God God – whose hand was I holding?”

— Shirley Jackson

268. “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

269. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

271. “Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

273. “A television set in Florida refused to let itself be turned off; until its owners took an axe to it, it continued, on or off, presenting inferior music and stale movies and endless, maddening advertising, and even under the axe, with its last sigh, it died with the praises of a hair tonic on its lips.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

275. “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

276. “Stuff yourself full of kippers,” Luke said. “Then it will be impossible to feel anything at all.”

— Shirley Jackson

277. “She was watching Aunt Morgen carefully, looking at the big earnest ugly face and the false little smile and the mouth still a little open, and she thought, people shouldn’t ever look closely at one another, they’re not like pictures.”

— Shirley Jackson

278. “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

279. “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

280. “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

281. “One of the most terrifying aspects of publishing stories and books is the realization that they are going to be read, and read by strangers. I had never fully realized this before, although I had of course in my imagination dwelt lovingly upon the thought of the millions and millions of people who were going to be uplifted and enriched and delighted by the stories I wrote.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

285. “I could help her in her shop, Eleanor thought; she loves beautiful things and I would go with her to find them. We could go anywhere we pleased, to the edge of the world if we liked, and come back when we wanted to.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

287. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

290. “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

291. “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

292. “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

293. “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

294. “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

295. “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

296. “It has always been my opinion that princesses are confined in towers only because they choose to stay confined, and the only dragon required to keep them there was their own desire to be kept.”

— Shirley Jackson

297. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

299. “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

300. “I want to say I’m sorry. I was wicked last night.” I was still and cold, looking at her and remembering. “I was very wicked,” she said. “I never should have reminded you of why they all died.” “Then don’t remind me now.” I could not move my hand to reach over and take hers.”

— Shirley Jackson