In the country of the story the writer is king.

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.

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.

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.

Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven.

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

We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.