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.

The sight of one's own heart is degrading; people are not meant to look inward - that's why they've been given bodies, to hide their souls.

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

It was one of those winter days that suddenly dream of spring, when the sky is blue and soft and clear, and the wind has dropped its voice and whispers instead of screaming, and the sun is out and the trees look surprised, and over everything there is the faintest, palest tint of green.

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.

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.

God! Whose hand was I holding?