We are all measured, good or evil, by the wrong we do to others; I had made a monster and turned it loose upon the world and – since recognition is, after all, the cruelest pain – had seen it clearly and with understanding.
I hated them anyway, and wondered why it had been worth while creating them in the first place.
During all of dinner the singing went on upstairs, and no one said a word.
I reveal myself, then, at last: I am a villian, for I created wantonly, and a blackguard, for I destroyed without compassion; I have no excuse.
She was a stranger in a world of strangers and they were strangers she had left behind.
Nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them; each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question – as “Do you love me?” – could never be answered or forgotten.
Miss Fielding had no fears of ultimate survival, even in beauty. When she passed on, she would draw after her every trailing mist of herself, effacing herself so completely that even after her death, even after her bones, which she could not help, were gone, she would be a bother to no one, would intrude on no mind.
If I am spared,” he always said to Constance, “I will write the book myself. If not, see that my notes are entrusted to some worthy cynic who will not be too concerned with the truth.
Is everyone really crazy but me?
Sometimes, when it had been a hard day at school and the future looked unusually dark, Miss Matt would permit herself to cry luxuriously for half an hour; afterward she would wash her face, and dress and go out to some nice restaurant for dinner.
By the time she was standing up and in her bathrobe the day had fallen into its routine; after the first involuntary rebellion against every day’s alarm she subsided regularly into the shower, make-up, dress, breakfast schedule which would take her through the beginning of the day and out into the morning where she could forget the green grass and the hot sun and begin to look forward to dinner and the evening.
It is a longing so intense that it creates what it desires, it cannot endure any touch of correction; it is, as I say, unspeakable.
I decided that I would choose three powerful words, words of strong protection, and so long as these great words were never spoken aloud no change would come. I wrote the first word – melody – in the apricot jam on my toast with the handle of a spoon and then put the toast in my mouth and ate it very quickly. I was one-third safe.
It is unholy because it is heretic. It is foul. It is abominable to need something so badly that you cannot picture living without it. It is a contradiction to the condition of mankind.
Each was so bent upon her own despair that escape into darkness was vital, and, containing themselves in that tight, vulnerable, impossible cloak which is fury, they stamped along together, each achingly aware of the other, each determined to be the last to speak.
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. I will tell him that I can never understand such a thing, that maudlin self-pity does not move directly at my heart; I will not make a fool of myself by encouraging him to mock me. “I understand, yes,” she said.
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
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.
It’s not nice to think of children growing up like mushrooms, in the dark.
Wait till you see the bedrooms,” Eleanor said. “Mine used to be the embalming room, I think.” “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 –.