Top 350 Shirley Jackson Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “I think it cannot be too firmly emphasized that in the writing of any kind of fiction no scene and no character can be allowed to wander off by itself; there must be some furthering of the story in every sentence, and even the most fleeting background characters must partake of the story in some way; they must be characters peculiar to this story and no other.”

— Shirley Jackson

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

306. “Some rose petals are poisonous.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

308. “They made houses so oddly back when Hill House was built, she thought; they put towers and turrets and buttresses and wooden lace on them, even sometimes Gothic spires and gargoyles; nothing was ever left undecorated.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

311. “She probably watches every move we make, anyway; it’s probably part of what she agreed to.” “Agreed to with whom, I wonder? Count Dracula?” “You think he lives in Hill House?” “I think he spends all his week ends here; I swear I saw bats in the woodwork.”

— Shirley Jackson

312. “Some of these rooms are entirely inside rooms,” the doctor said from ahead of them. “No windows, no access to the outdoors at all. However, a series of enclosed rooms is not altogether surprising in a house of this period, particularly when you recall that what windows they did have were heavily shrouded with hangings and draperies within, and shrubbery without. Ah.”

— Shirley Jackson

313. “She had done so much to preserve herself from this kind of captivity and had taken inevitably one of the many roads which would lead her to the same torment; she was helpless among people who hated her and showed it by holding her motionless until they should choose to release her.”

— Shirley Jackson

314. “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

315. “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

316. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

318. “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

319. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

321. “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

322. “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

323. “My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.”

— Shirley Jackson

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

329. “I told you that you would like it on the moon.”

— Shirley Jackson

330. “Now what was here, she wondered, what was here and is gone, or what was going to be here and never came?”

— Shirley Jackson

331. “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

332. “I think we are only afraid of ourselves,” the doctor said slowly.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

334. “A change was coming, and nobody knew it but me.”

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

336. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

340. “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

341. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

343. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

345. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

347. “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

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

— Shirley Jackson

349. “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

350. “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