Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Hardie Jacksonwas an American author. She was a popular writer in her time, and her work has received increased attention from literary critics in recent years. She influenced Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth14 December 1916
CitySan Francisco, CA
CountryUnited States of America
eye sight return
It is only with the eyes open that a corporeal form returns, and assembles itself firmly around the hard core of sight.
eye sea two
[L]et my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minutes, and see if he does not find himself suddenly not a compact human being at all, but only a consciousness on a sea of sound and touch . . .
horse moon rose
Today my winged horse is coming and I am carrying you off to the moon and on the moon we will eat rose petals.
heart sight people
The sight of one's own heart is degrading; people are not meant to look inward - that's why they've been given bodies, to hide their souls.
believe doe world
in all the world there is not someone who does not believe something.
philosophy hands exotic
It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. On the other hand, abstract belief is largely impossible; it is the concrete, the actuality of the cup, the candle, the sacrificial stone, which hardens belief; the statue is nothing until it cries, the philosophy is nothing until the philosopher is martyred.
mother worry giving
For plain and fancy worrying, give me a new mother every time.
house atmosphere holiness
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.
heaven house hills
Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven.
morning women sleep
She walked quickly around her one-room apartment. After more than four years in this one home she knew all its possibilities, how it could put on a sham appearance of warmth and welcome when she needed a place to hide in, how it stood over her in the night when she woke suddenly, how it could relax itself into a disagreeable unmade, badly-put-together state, mornings like this, anxious to drive her out and go back to sleep.
jobs home giving
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.
dream spring winter
It was one of those winter days that suddenly dream of spring, when the sky is blue and soft and clear, and the wind has dropped its voice and whispers instead of screaming, and the sun is out and the trees look surprised, and over everything there is the faintest, palest tint of green.
girl baby morning
I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper. A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi. A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child. A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy. The lead article on the woman's page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me.
powerful jewels land
All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.