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

I came to believe that being a private detective was the work I was meant to do.

Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow the humor of its basic assumption about how it is possible to teach things to children.

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

I 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.

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.

I can't help it when people are frightened," says Merricat. "I always want to frighten them more.