Shirley Jackson quote: "I suppose the mothers of most twelve-year-old boys live with the uneasy conviction that their sons are embarked upon a secret life of crime."

The twins were loitering over their cereal, and Mrs. Walpole, with one eye on the clock and the othe...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

Let my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minutes,...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

It has long been my belief that in times of great stress, such as a 4-day vacation, the thin veneer ...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back ...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

It has long been my belief that in times of great stress, such as a 4-day vacation, the thin vene...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

I wonder if I could eat a child if I had the chance.'
'I doubt if I could cook one,' said Const...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask th...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material ...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the ...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.
SHIRLEY JACKSON

I was thinking that being a demon and a ghost must be very difficult, even for Charles; if he ever f...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.
SHIRLEY JACKSON

I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny ...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask the Be...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

[L]et my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minute...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even la...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

Poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of.
SHIRLEY JACKSON

They were worried that it might get stolen, so they kept it hidden in the bottom of the truck, ... W...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

I sort of thought that maybe people had to talk that way, sort of saying the same things over and ov...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

All cat stories start with this statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

The trees around and overhead were so thick that it was always dry inside and on Sunday morning I la...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

Poor things, she thought - do they have to spend all this energy just to surround me? It seemed piti...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

In my own experience, contacts with the big world outside the typewriter are puzzling and terrifying...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

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

A pretty sight, a lady with a book.
SHIRLEY JACKSON

Cocoa? Cocoa! Damn miserable puny stuff, fit for kittens and unwashed boys. Did Shakespeare drink co...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

It is only with the eyes open that a corporeal form returns, and assembles itself firmly around the ...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

They stayed off the interstates because they heard that [those roads] were a mess,
SHIRLEY JACKSON

When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, per...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

I looked at the clock with the faint unconscious hope common to all mothers that time will somehow h...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even la...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

All of the village was of a piece, a time, and a style; it was as though the people needed the uglin...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her m...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine, is it still in use? You are wondering, has i...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

Is everyone really crazy but me?
SHIRLEY JACKSON

The children around our house have a saying that everything is either true, not true, or one of Moth...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

Perhaps—and this was her most persistent thought, the thought that stayed with her and came sudden...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

On the moon we wore feathers in our hair, and rubies on our hands. On the moon we had gold spoons.
SHIRLEY JACKSON

None of these things bothered us excessively; we have always been a family that carries bewilderment...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

Mrs. Spencer distrusted letters on principle, because they always seemed to want to entangle her in ...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

Upstairs Margaret said abruptly, 'I suppose it starts to happen first in the suburbs,' and when Brad...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

If I am not the legal resident of the apartment you cannot evict me. You cannot evict Mrs. Tuttle, w...
SHIRLEY JACKSON

I have a lot of very close girlfriends and sisters - I'm from an all female family. My father of...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I think it's a great thing to have failed in life and then pulled yourself up by the boot straps...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I have a temper on me that could hold back tides.
SHIRLEY MANSON

And then there's all these other creeps that surround your band and suck off you like leeches an...
SHIRLEY MANSON

People in day-to-day life tend to skim the surface of things and be polite and careful, and that'...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I refuse to step inside the ring and fight like a gladiator against my own. I'm not playing that...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I've got no timetable. I'm sort of sick of timetables, to be honest.
SHIRLEY MANSON

I mean, I tend to do my own thing, and that usually crosses purposes with everyone around me.
SHIRLEY MANSON

Mozart was a punk, which people seem to forget. He was a naughty, naughty boy.
SHIRLEY MANSON

It's unhealthy for people to never express any kind of negativity or doubt. To have balance, you...
SHIRLEY MANSON

Possibly because I grew up not feeling very confident about my own physical appearance, I developed ...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I would say I'm pretty well at ease with my sexuality, but I'm an individual before I am a f...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I want to hear from the creature who isn't blessed with unbelievable good looks and incredible g...
SHIRLEY MANSON

In terms of fitting in, you know, I don't have a lot of armor up. I'm a raw nerve and it'...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I just am fascinated by other female artists, probably because I feel a kinship with them, no matter...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I like the feeling that I'm giving young women self-confidence. It sounds so cliched, but it can...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I'm fairly in control and I don't like to flirt particularly. I mean, obviously if I meet so...
SHIRLEY MANSON

The sensation of never feeling good enough or pretty enough will always be there. It's a constan...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I was a redhead and a middle child; both can make you feel excluded. It's like fighting to be in...
SHIRLEY MANSON

Humans all want to beat the clock but nobody ever does.
SHIRLEY MANSON

I am a contradictory mess but I see it as my prerogative to change my mood like the weather.
SHIRLEY MANSON

People don't associate red hair, pale skin, and freckles with beauty.
SHIRLEY MANSON

I'm afraid of happy people. They're chemically unbalanced.
SHIRLEY MANSON

I am not a sexy woman, I'm not beautiful, I'm not a sex kitten, I don't flirt with peopl...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I think a lot of people in their lives feel like they don't fit in, even if it looks like they d...
SHIRLEY MANSON

What makes a woman stylish is what she has to say and how she chooses to live her life.
SHIRLEY MANSON

It's great to see that celebrities can be just like us - that they too have their highs and lows...
SHIRLEY JONES

It's useless to hold a person to anything he says while he's in love, drunk, or running for ...
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of th...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

All are equal
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And...
JAMES SHIRLEY

After I won the Oscar, my salary doubled, my friends tripled, my children became more popular at sch...
SHIRLEY JONES

I combined theatre and films with live TV, such as 'The Royal Variety Show,' performing sket...
SHIRLEY EATON

The best way to get husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they are too old to do it.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

I've always been bossy.
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

One would always want to think of oneself as being on the side of love, ready to recognize it and wi...
SHIRLEY HAZZARD

Only the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust.
JAMES SHIRLEY

What really matters is what you do with what you have.
SHIRLEY LORD

The Catholic Church has never really come to terms with women. What I object to is being treated eit...
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS

Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

No test tube can breed love and affection. No frozen packet of semen ever read a story to a sleepy c...
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS

There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, fo...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

I don't need anyone to rectify my existence. The most profound relationship we will ever have is the...
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

Animals are considered as property only. To destroy or to abuse them, from malice to the proprietor,...
SHIRLEY LORD

Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true ho...
SHIRLEY HAZZARD

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: 'It's ...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour aga...
JAMES SHIRLEY

Cease, warring thoughts, and let his brain
No more discord entertain
But be smooth and calm a...
JAMES SHIRLEY

It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality....
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

We Americans have the chance to become someday a nation in which all radical stocks and classes can ...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

I make no secret of the fact that I would rather lie on a sofa than sweep beneath it. But you have t...
SHIRLEY CONRAN

If you play it safe in life, you've decided that you don't want to grow anymore.
SHIRLEY HUFSTEDLER

It is useless to hold a person to anything he says while he is in love, drunk, or running for office...
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress ...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

I've always been the breadwinner and men don't like that. They turn on you. They bite the hand that ...
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I empathize with those who yearn for a simpler world, for some bygone golden age of domestic and int...
SHIRLEY HUFSTEDLER

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It's a...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrus...
SHIRLEY HUFSTEDLER

In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing -...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he a...
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

Images adorn our inner life and carry great power there.
WILLIAM SHIRLEY

Any star can be devoured by human adoration, sparkle by sparkle.
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

Crystals amplify the consciousness.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

I am of opinion that it is highly requisite forthwith to pass a law, prohibiting upon great penaltie...
WILLIAM SHIRLEY

I just want to live my life a little freely and not adhere to any schedule - just make music and hav...
SHIRLEY MANSON

If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

Legal discrimination between the sexes is, in almost every instance, founded on outmoded views of so...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

When a child comes in, I believe that it's a 'multipersonhood,' and it knows it, its con...
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

Time is money. Wasted time means wasted money means trouble.
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

Biographies of me have usually been compiled from old newspaper clips, untruthful publicity stories,...
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

I learned by standing in the wings and watching established acts on stage.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

You want success, and then when you do get it, you don't want it because of the attention.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

When you live in a safe place like Monte Carlo, you can walk home at any time of the night and you d...
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I'm a virgin and I brought up all my children to be the same.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I hate it when people come up to me when I'm eating.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I decided to retire from show business at the age of 17, because I didn't like it a bit.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I'm always being asked if I watch 'The X Factor,' and I do from time to time. I know it ...
SHIRLEY BASSEY

It's hard for a man to live with a successful woman - they seem to resent you so much. Very few ...
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I think men are afraid to be with a successful woman, because we are terribly strong, we know what w...
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I'm too busy putting my energies into my performance to be a diva.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

When I started singing, I couldn't be shut up.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I've always been the breadwinner and men don't like that. They turn on you. They bite the ha...
SHIRLEY BASSEY

Diamonds never leave you... men do!
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I was a wild kid. I was left to climb trees. And you know those railways logs, they piled them up, s...
SHIRLEY BASSEY

You don't get older, you get better.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

Only the actions of the just, Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.
JAMES SHIRLEY

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It'...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progr...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

'Yes we can' always struck many as a naive and childish chant, like something ripped off fro...
CRAIG SHIRLEY

My solo album is dead and buried. We had the funeral. It was sad and I cried a lot but it made such ...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I did an imitation of him to make the crew laugh. To my shock, there was Cary Grant behind me. He go...
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

The fact is that a woman who aspires to be chairman of the board - or a member of the House - does s...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

It's really difficult to navigate attention and stardom and celebrity status and still try to ma...
SHIRLEY MANSON

Healing is not about moving on or “getting over it,” it’s about learning to make peace with ou...
SHIRLEY KAMISKY

George Wallace for some strange, unknown reason, he liked me. George Wallace came down to Florida, a...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

I'd never imagined myself in a band. So the fact that I've had such a long career without re...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I was in Vienna in August 1968 for a meeting of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis S...
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

The glories of our blood and state, Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against ...
JAMES SHIRLEY

I couldn't feel good about myself hanging out in Armani clothes when my girlfriend can't eve...
SHIRLEY MANSON

Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time... its idea of meeting a problem is to hold hearin...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

I'm looking to no man walking this earth for approval of what I'm doing.
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

No wedding bells for me anymore. I've been happily married to my profession for years.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I want history to remember me... not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency ...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

It was a wonderful time [making "The Partridge Family"] and I loved every minute of it. We had a gr...
SHIRLEY JONES

Sometimes the Lord allows us to go through tough times so we learn to rely upon Him.
SHIRLEY CORDER

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store a...
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never ceased to be amused.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

Nothing crushes freedom as substantially as a tank.
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

I'm cursed with empathy. I'm also by nature way too opinionated.
JOHN SHIRLEY

I daydream all the time, and I like that quality.
SHIRLEY HENDERSON

When I asked my mother why crowds shouted my name and said 'We love you,' she would dust it ...
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrus...
SHIRLEY HUFSTEDLER

Hark, how chimes the passing bell! There's no music to a knell; All the other sounds we hear, ...
JAMES SHIRLEY

Make-believe colors the past with innocent distortion, and it swirls ahead of us in a thousand ways ...
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

I think paranoia can be instructive in the right doses. Paranoia is a skill.
JOHN SHIRLEY

I've made so many movies playing a hooker that they don't pay me in the regular way anymore....
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

I've been blessed with three wonderful careers: motion pictures and television, wife, mother and...
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

Innocence could be considered a discrete state of mind.
JOHN SHIRLEY

We've had so many lifetimes of different cultures and different religions and different points o...
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

I'm incapable of writing without social commentary. I like to think that it's integrated and...
JOHN SHIRLEY

My role models were Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt, and my major crush was J. Edgar Hoover.
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

You're never too old to grow up.
SHIRLEY CONRAN

Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.
SHIRLEY HAZZARD

I would rather lie on a sofa than sweep beneath it.
SHIRLEY CONRAN

Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.
SHIRLEY CONRAN

Waddya want me to do? through my sling shot at him?
SHIRLEY HUGHES

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, 'It's ...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

I don't measure America by its achievement but by its potential.
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

Weekends are a bit like rainbows; they look good from a distance but disappear when you get up close...
JOHN SHIRLEY

Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

Beauty was darkness till she came.
Then paint her eyes, whose active light
Shall make the fo...
JAMES SHIRLEY

The rhythm of life is intricate but orderly, tenacious but fragile. To keep that in mind is to bui...
SHIRLEY HUFSTEDLER

I am an expert in hookers. I'm an expert in doormats. I'm an expert in victims. They were the best ...
SHIRLEY MACLAINE

I think they're a little shocked at first. . . . Then they start laughing or grinning or shaking my ...
SHIRLEY MANSON

Sex is not the enemy . . . I won't feel guilty no matter what they're telling me,
SHIRLEY MANSON

I state for the record that I am PRO CHOICE. No government, no man, no neighbour of mine is going to...
SHIRLEY MANSON

The communication had gotten so bad that I don't think any of us know, even to this day, what was go...
SHIRLEY MANSON

I'm very expressive, but I'm also a very private person. It is so hard to be private in the ...
SHIRLEY EATON

Of course laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of human beings. But that is no reason t...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

America is composed of all kinds of people - part of the difficulty in our nation today is due to th...
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

Pop music seems to be the way radio programming has chosen to support female artists. They have chos...
SHIRLEY MANSON

If you have any opinions at all or if you're even remotely verbal then they're going to call...
SHIRLEY MANSON

Film actors reach a certain level, but they don't get beyond it unless they work in the theater.
SHIRLEY KNIGHT

I'd like to run away from you, but if you didn't come and find me, I would die...
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I'm a virgin and I brought up all my children to be the same.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

No wedding bells for me anymore. I've been happily married to my profession for years.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

I love him because he is Welsh and stylish...and because he gave me these shoes.
SHIRLEY BASSEY

Who would have thought a little girl from Tiger Bay would one day become a Dame?
SHIRLEY BASSEY

We are exploring the sale of both assets. Whether [the Braves and Turner South] were going to be sol...
SHIRLEY POWELL

Most of the people in Ghana wouldn't know me as an actress. They'd know me for my work at th...
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

Conran's rule of housework: it expands to fill the time available plus half an hour
SHIRLEY CONRAN

I'm a fan of Jerome Kern and Gershwin. That's my kind of music.
SHIRLEY JONES

I suppose the mothers of most twelve-year-old boys live with the uneasy conviction that their sons are embarked upon a secret life of crime.

Copied!

Shirley Jackson

I suppose the mothers of most twelve-year-old boys live with the uneasy conviction that their sons are embarked upon a secret life of crime.

Shirley Jackson

Share:

Related

More Shirley Jackson