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

Shirley Jackson Quotes

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

— Shirley Jackson

Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books.

— Shirley Jackson

I don’t stay after I set out dinner,” Mrs. Dudley went on. “Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes.

— Shirley Jackson

God has given me blood to drink.

— Shirley Jackson

The wet raincoat smell was exciting, carrying with it remotely the institutional smells of the college, a faint echo of a cologne Natalie had never worn in her life; near the pocket was a cigarette burn she had not made; the raincoat was in itself a symbol of going and coming, of wishing and fearing, or, precisely, the going out of a warm, firelit house into the heartbreaking cold.

— Shirley Jackson

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

The trees around and overhead were so thick that it was always dry inside and on Sunday morning I lay there with Jonas, listening to his stories. All cat stories start with the statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this,” and I lay with my head close to Jonas and listened.

— Shirley Jackson

Essex made a face. ‘Ambrosia is not my drink.

— Shirley Jackson

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

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

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson

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

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-.

— Shirley Jackson

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

I assure you,” the doctor said, “that Hill House will be quiet tonight. There is a pattern to these things, as though psychic phenomena were subject to laws of a very particular sort.

— Shirley Jackson

It was an unpleasant business, like all family quarrels, and as in all family quarrels incredibly harsh and cruel things were said on either side.

— Shirley Jackson

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

— Shirley Jackson
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