Top 350 Shirley Jackson Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “It is not proven that Elizabeth’s person equilibrium was set off balance by the slant of the office floor, nor could it be proven that it was Elizabeth who pushed the building off its foundations, but it is undeniable that they began to slip at about the same time.”

— Shirley Jackson

304. “My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.”

— Shirley Jackson

305. “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

306. “Would you think I ought to give up my painting just for a home and a couple of lousy children with running noses?”

— Shirley Jackson

307. “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

308. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

311. “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

312. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

314. “It is most agreeable to be a writer of fiction for several reasons–one of the most important being, of course that you can persuade people that it is really work if you look haggard enough–but perhaps the most useful thing about being a writer of fiction is that nothing is ever wasted; all experience is good for something; you tend to see everything as a potential structure of words.”

— Shirley Jackson

315. “What are you laughing about now?” Constance asked me. “I am thinking that we are on the moon, but it is not quite as I supposed it would be.” “It is a very happy place, though.”

— Shirley Jackson

316. “I have no way of knowing what we may be called upon to do for ourselves.”

— Shirley Jackson

317. “Nothing is hard to do unless you get upset or excited about it.”

— Shirley Jackson

318. “Essex made a face. ‘Ambrosia is not my drink.”

— Shirley Jackson

319. “It is my hope to, one day, share my love for HPL with the world.”

— Shirley Jackson

320. “I think they want the same things you do, only you would... inherit them, so to speak, just by growing up. Things like excitement, and new experiences, and all kinds of strange and wonderful things happening; you get them anyway, just by the process of growing older, but for them... they’ve already outgrown all they know and they want to try it all over again. Even at my age, you keep thinking you’ve missed so much, and you get older all the time.”

— Shirley Jackson

321. “When Luke and I are called outside, and you two are kept imprisoned inside – doesn’t it begin to seem – and his voice is very quiet – doesn’t it begin to seem that the intention is, somehow, to separate us?”

— Shirley Jackson

322. “A woman born for tragedy, perhaps, although inclined to be a little silly.”

— Shirley Jackson

323. “Eleanor felt, as she had the day before, that the conversation was being skillfully guided away from the thought of fear, so very present in her own mind. Perhaps she was to be allowed to speak occasionally for all of them so that, quieting her, they quieted themselves and could leave the subject behind them;.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

325. “Our house is old, and noisy, and full. When we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; I expect that when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily half a million books.”

— Shirley Jackson

326. “Now I want to say something about words artificially weighted; you can, and frequently must, make a word carry several meanings or messages in your story if you use the word right. This is a kind of shorthand.”

— Shirley Jackson

327. “Bow all your heads to our adored Mary Katherine.”

— Shirley Jackson

328. “She is hysterical,” said Mrs. Halloran. “Slap her quite firmly in the face.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

330. “By changing the emphasis and angle on this little plot we can make it say almost anything we like. There is certainly no need to worry about whether any of this is true, or actually happened; it is as true as you make it. The important thing is that it be true in the story, and actually happen there.”

— Shirley Jackson

331. “Everything is worse,” he said, looking at Eleanor, “if you think something is looking at you.”

— Shirley Jackson

332. “I dislike all the beginnings of conversations where people ask one another as subtly as possible how old they are, and what their names are, and how they are feeling these days.”

— Shirley Jackson

333. “On the other hand,” the doctor continued behind her, “a Fielding novel comparable in length, although hardly in subject matter, would never do for very young children. I even have doubts about Sterne –.”

— Shirley Jackson

334. “People like answering questions about themselves, she thought; what an odd pleasure it is. I would answer anything right now.”

— Shirley Jackson

335. “Once the accusation was made, evidence could easily be found.”

— Shirley Jackson

336. “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

337. “No one, she thought, can catch me now; they don’t even know which way I’m going.”

— Shirley Jackson

338. “It’s spring, you’re young, you’re lovely, you have a right to be happy. Come back into the world.”

— Shirley Jackson

339. “What place would be better for us than this? Who wants us, outside? The world is full of terrible people.”

— Shirley Jackson

340. “I used that sugar.” Uncle Julian shook his finger at her. “I used that sugar myself, on my blackberries. Luckily,” and he smiled blandly, “fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar.”

— Shirley Jackson

341. “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

342. “How happy we all are, she thought, and how lucky that I came at last!”

— Shirley Jackson

343. “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

344. “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

345. “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

346. “Mr. Halloran had been crying, but this was not unusual; since he had been made to realize that he would not, now, be vouchsafed a second run at youth he cried easily and often.”

— Shirley Jackson

347. “No one even noticed me, she thought with reassurance, everyone who saw me has gone by long ago.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

349. “Some lives, ending as Miss Fielding’s would, leave a grain of memory, like a grain of sand, in the depths of another mind, a grain of sand which is like the constant irritation under an oyster’s shell, eventually to grow with coating after coating of disguising beauty into a pearl. Sometime this memory would be pried loose, in its rounded beauty, to stand by itself as an object of delight.”

— Shirley Jackson

350. “I was thinking that you might make a gingerbread man, and I could name him Charles and eat him.”

— Shirley Jackson