Shirley Jackson was an American writer famous for her short story “The Lottery” and the novel “The Haunting of the Hill House”; which were acclaimed to be the best ghost stories ever. Instigating fear among the readers became the trademark of Shirley. She went on to win the coveted National Book Award and several Best American Short Stories awards in the process. Her work was not autobiographical in nature by any means as she believed that such type of writing only produced bare chronological facts with no pertinent facts. The Shirley Jackson Award was instituted in her honor to award exceptional achievement in English Literature in the horror and suspense genre. Since 2015, North Bennington celebrates June 27 as “Shirley Jackson Day”. Shirley shared her wisdom and thoughts on several things through her writings. We have collected Shirley’s quotes on books, children, dreams, hills, house, moon, morning, summer, writing, stories etc from her writings. Following are some of her most famous quotes .
Fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar.
I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.
I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.
We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.
Shirley Jackson
Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.
Shirley Jackson
You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine, is it still in use? You are wondering, has it been cleaned? You may very well ask, was it thoroughly washed?
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.
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.
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
Oh Constance, we are so happy.
Shirley Jackson
Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.
Shirley Jackson
In the country of the story the writer is king.
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?
Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time when materialization was in any way hampered by the presence of books.
Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; 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
I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there.
He is altogether selfish, she thought in some surprise, the only man I have ever sat and talked to alone, and I am impatient; he is simply not very interesting.
Can't you make them stop?' I asked her that day, wondering if there was anything in this woman I could speak to, if she had ever run joyfully over grass, or had watched flowers, or known delight or love.
When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry.
Shirley Jackson
You never know what you are going to want until you see it clearly.
I looked at the clock with the faint unconscious hope common to all mothers that time will somehow have passed magically away and the next time you look it will be bedtime.
Everything that makes the world like it is now will be gone. We'll have new rules and new ways of living. Maybe there'll be a law not to live in houses, so then no one can hide from anyone else, you see.
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, but some, to dream.
Shirley Jackson
Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!
Upstairs Margaret said abruptly, 'I suppose it starts to happen first in the suburbs,' and when Brad said, 'What starts to happen?' she said hysterically, 'People starting to come apart.
Shirley Jackson
It is only with the eyes open that a corporeal form returns, and assembles itself firmly around the hard core of sight.
Shirley Jackson
What are you reading, my dear? A pretty sight, a lady with a book.
When we had neatened the upstairs rooms we came downstairs together, carrying our dustcloths and the broom and dustpan and mop like a pair of witches walking home.
We started out making men in about the state of mind which I suppose created them in the first place -- we had run out of kinds of women, and had to think of something else.
People,” the doctor said sadly, “are always so anxious to get things out into the open where they can put a name to them, even a meaningless name, so long as it has something of a scientific ring.
Shirley Jackson
Everything is worse...if you think something is looking at you.
Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow the humor of its basic assumption about how it is possible to teach things to children....
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 disliked having a fork pointed at me and I disliked the sound of the voice never stopping; I wished he would put food on the fork and put it into his mouth and strangle himself.
When they were silent for a moment the quiet weight of the house pressed down from all around them.
Shirley Jackson
...remember the metallic sound and taste of all of it. And the outrage.
Shirley Jackson
It was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it. The houses and the stores seemed to have been set up in contemptuous haste to provide shelter for the drab and the unpleasant.
Shirley Jackson
I loathe writing autobiographical material because if it's dull no-one should have to read it anyway, and if it's interesting I should be using it for a story.
He was scrupulous about the use of his title because, his investigations being so utterly unscientific, he hoped to borrow an air of respectability, even scholarly authority, from his education.
Shirley Jackson
Journeys end in lovers meeting
Shirley Jackson
I would not forget my magic words; they were MELODY GLOUCESTER PEGASUS, but I refused to let them into my mind.
Well, she asked, how do you gentlemen like living in a haunted house?
It's perfectly fine, Luke said, perfectly fine. It gives me an excuse to have a drink in the middle of the night.
We are all measured, good or evil, by the wrong we do to others;
Shirley Jackson
In the darkness their feet felt that they were going downhill, and each privately and perversely accused the other of taking, deliberately, a path they had followed together once before in happiness.
We started out making men in about the state of mind which I suppose created them in the first place—we had run out of kinds of women, and had to think of something else.
