[L]et my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minutes, and see if he does not find himself suddenly not a compact human being at all, but only a consciousness on a sea of sound and touch . . .
Shirley JacksonI am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.
Shirley JacksonFear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.
Shirley JacksonWe eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.
Shirley JacksonShe walked quickly around her one-room apartment. After more than four years in this one home she knew all its possibilities, how it could put on a sham appearance of warmth and welcome when she needed a place to hide in, how it stood over her in the night when she woke suddenly, how it could relax itself into a disagreeable unmade, badly-put-together state, mornings like this, anxious to drive her out and go back to sleep.
Shirley Jackson