“I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believe that a painter cannot sit down to his morning coffee without noticing what color it is, so a writer cannot see an odd little gesture without putting a verbal description to it, and ought never to let a moment go by undescribed.”
“I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believe that a painter cannot sit down to his morning coffee without noticing what color it is, so a writer cannot see an odd little gesture without putting a verbal description to it, and ought never to let a moment go by undescribed.”
Shirley Jackson
“She wants her cup of stars.”
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House“All cat stories start with the statement: 'My mother, who was the first cat, told me this,' and I lay with Jonas listening to his stories.”
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle“I delight in what I fear.”
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 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.”
Shirley Jackson“It’s not nice to think of children growing up like mushrooms, in the dark.”
Shirley Jackson“Everything is worse...if you think something is looking at you.”
Shirley Jackson“Around the house, my head deep in a pillowcase or the oven, my eyes focused on that supernatural neatness which the housewife sees somehow shadowing her familiar furniture, it was largely possible to disregard, or not-quite-hear, Sally, but in the car I was entirely what I believe is called a captive audience.”
Shirley Jackson“I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have little house all by myself on the moon.”
Shirley Jackson“So long as you write it away regularly nothing can really hurt you.”
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