Shirley Jackson quotes

Shirley Jackson was an American writer renowned for her works of horror and psychological suspense. Her stories often explored themes of social alienation, family dynamics, and the darker aspects of human nature. She remains highly influential, with works like "The Lottery" and "The Haunting of Hill House" regarded as literary classics. Here are 59 of her quotes:

I delight in what I fear.

Shirley Jackson

I can't help it when people are frightened," says Merricat. "I always want to frighten them more.

Shirley Jackson

Today my winged horse is coming and I am carrying you off to the moon and on the moon we will eat rose petals.

Shirley Jackson

Certainly there are spots which inevitably attach to themselves an atmosphere of holiness and goodness; it might not then be too fanciful to say that some houses are born bad.

Shirley Jackson

I wonder if I could eat a child if I had the chance.' 'I doubt if I could cook one,' said Constance.

Shirley Jackson

"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

Shirley Jackson

All cat stories start with this statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...

Shirley Jackson

I'm going to put death in all their food and watch them die.

Shirley Jackson

I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask the Best Western manager to give me a job. I have cleaned homes.

Shirley Jackson

I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains no pertinent facts.

Shirley Jackson

There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.

Shirley Jackson

All I could think of when I got a look at the place from the outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down.

Shirley Jackson

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.

Shirley Jackson

On the moon we have everything. Lettuce, and pumpkin pie and Amanita phalloides. We have cat-furred plants and horses dancing with their wings. All the locks are solid and tight, and there are no ghosts.

Shirley Jackson

Gossip says she hanged herself from the turret on the tower, but when you have a house like Hill House with a tower and a turret, gossip would hardly allow you to hang yourself anywhere else.

Shirley Jackson

We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean; the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved.

Shirley Jackson

God! Whose hand was I holding?

Shirley Jackson

No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense.

Shirley Jackson

Why do people want to talk to each other? I mean, what are the things people always want to find out about other people?

Shirley Jackson

Oh Constance, we are so happy.

Shirley Jackson

The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play.

Shirley Jackson

No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.

Shirley Jackson