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?
Shirley JacksonAll I could think of when I got a look at the place from the outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down.
Shirley JacksonI am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.
Shirley JacksonI 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.
Shirley JacksonI was already doing a lot of splendid research reading all the books about ghosts I could get hold of, and particularly true ghost stories - so much so that it became necessary for me to read a chapter of _Little Women_ every night before I turned out the light - and at the same time I was collecting pictures of houses, particularly odd houses, to see what I could find to make into a suitable haunted house.
Shirley Jackson