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
american-novelist books both children exports major produce sarah
Our major exports are books and children, both of which we produce in abundance. The children are Laurence, Joanne, Sarah and Carry.
dad cheer writing
Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Yorker … [I]t does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don't you write something to cheer people up?
dog hands years
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. 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 dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.
summer winter air
February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back any air of summer.
summer morning taken
She had taken to wondering lately, during these swift-counted years, what had been done with all those wasted summer days; how could she have spent them so wantonly? I am foolish, she told herself early every summer, I am very foolish; I am grown up now and know the values of things. Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one's childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by.
summer spring fall
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.
hands two luck
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.
fake-people writing giving
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.
bridges games intellect
Bridge is a game for the undivided intellect.
hands
God! Whose hand was I holding?
mind superstitions defense
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.
kindness people house
It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house ; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.
long house clean
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.