Would you think I ought to give up my painting just for a home and a couple of lousy children with running noses?
She wants her cup of stars.” Eleanor.
When I am afraid, I can see perfectly the sensible, beautiful not-afraid side of the world, I can see chairs and tables and windows staying the same, not affected in the least, and I can see things like the careful woven texture of the carpet, not even moving. But when I am afraid I no longer exist in any relation to these things. I suppose because things are not afraid.
Remember, this – this is the end we have waited for so long.
On the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.
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.
I am home, I am home, she thought; now to climb.
Stuff yourself full of kippers,” Luke said. “Then it will be impossible to feel anything at all.
If you are not ready in three minutes I will come in and drown you. I want my breakfast.
All I want is to be cherished, she thought, and here I am talking gibberish with a selfish man.
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.
A courtesan, a pilgrim, a princess, and a bullfighter.
I think we are only afraid of ourselves,” the doctor said slowly. “No,” Luke said. “Of seeing ourselves clearly and without disguise.
Ask your mommy can we have two chairs out here,” Billy said. “Then we can pretend the whole garden is our house.
Well, Eleanor thought, staring after the taxi, there’s one person, anyway, who will be praying for me. One person anyway.
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.
Blackwoods had always lived in our house, and kept their things in order; as soon as a new Blackwood wife moved in, a place was found for her belongings, and so our house was built up with layers of Blackwood property weighting it, and keeping it steady against the world.
Passing through the outskirts of the city, she thought, it’s as though everything were traveling so fast that the solid stuff couldn’t stand it and were going to pieces under the strain, cornices blowing off and windows caving in. She knew she was afraid to say it truly, afraid to face the knowledge that it was a voluntary neck-breaking speed, a deliberate swirling faster and faster to end in destruction.
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.
Change layover the stairs and the kitchen and the garden like fog.