Shirley Jackson Quotations

The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a Bendix washer would amaze you.

Bridge is a game for the undivided intellect.

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.

Poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of.

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

Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long.

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.

Oh Constance, we are so happy.

The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books,

I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.