Top 350 Shirley Jackson Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Now, she thought; I may go mad, but at least I look like a lady.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

253. “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

254. “Foosball is a vile game... for vile people.” – Shirley Jackson, 1953.”

— 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. “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

257. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

259. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

262. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

266. “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

267. “All the millions of things we possessed as a family were inside the house, but, inexorably, there came one shocking moment when we discovered that the house was full.”

— Shirley Jackson

268. “You all want the whole world to be changed so you will be different. But I don’t suppose people get changed any by just a new world. And anyway that world isn’t any more real than this one.”

— Shirley Jackson

269. “Because this was a time and a land where enchantments were swiftly made and broken she wanted to linger over her lunch, knowing that Hill House always waited for her at the end of her day.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

271. “None of these things bothered us excessively; we have always been a family that carries bewilderment like a banner, and odd new confusions do not actually seem to be any more bewildering than the ones we invent for ourselves; moreover, in each of these cases it was easier to believe that nothing had happened, or that it was of no importance anyway.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

274. “I’m sure I’ve been here before,” Eleanor said. “In a book of fairy tales, perhaps.”

— Shirley Jackson

275. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

277. “We bought the big white house, at last, by merely signing our names on a piece of paper. Mr. Gore and Mr. Andrews down at the bank arranged the financial transference with an almost invisible maneuver of figures on a card. When my husband asked if we could borrow our money right back again and use the house as security, everybody laughed.”

— Shirley Jackson

278. “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

279. “Ask your mommy can we have two chairs out here,” Billy said. “Then we can pretend the whole garden is our house.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

281. “Beneath the trees it was not dark as a room is dark when the lights are put out, the artificial darkness which comes when an artificial light is gone; it was the deep natural darkness which comes with a forsaking of natural light.”

— Shirley Jackson

282. “But some of us go around hoping.”

— Shirley Jackson

283. “If I am not the legal resident of the apartment you cannot evict me. You cannot evict Mrs. Tuttle, who is the legal resident of the apartment, because she is not living here. Unless you accept my check you are not going to receive any rent for the apartment at all because you cannot rent it to anyone else while I am living here because you cannot evict me so they could move in. Mrs. Tuttle will not pay the rent because she is not living here. Sincerely, Marian Griswold.”

— Shirley Jackson

284. “It is almost silly to say that no one will read a story which does not interest him. Yet many writers forget it. They write a story which interests them, forgetting that the particular emotional investment they brought to the incident had never been communicated to the reader because, writing the story, they wrote down only what happened and not what was felt.”

— Shirley Jackson

285. “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

286. “Era una sconosciuta in un mondo di sconosciuti ed erano sconosciuti anche quelli che si era lasciata alle spalle.”

— Shirley Jackson

287. “Elizabeth watched him: this is Robbie, she was thinking, I know what he’s going to do and what he’s going to say and what tie he’s going to wear every day in the week, and for eleven years I have known these things and for eleven years I have been wondering how to say things to make him understand; and eleven years ago we sat here and held hands and he said we were going to be successful.”

— Shirley Jackson

288. “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

289. “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

290. “Remember, this – this is the end we have waited for so long.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

292. “The road to hell is very likely paved with my notes for stories and books and articles.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— 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. “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

296. “I like writing fiction better than anything, because just being a writer of fiction gives you an absolutely unassailable protection against reality; nothing is ever seen clearly or starkly, but always through a thin veil of words.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

298. “Some inner integrity had preserved their shop from being a shoppe.”

— Shirley Jackson

299. “Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books.”

— Shirley Jackson

300. “A man in Texas won a divorce from his wife because she tore out the last chapter of every mystery story he borrowed from the library.”

— Shirley Jackson