Shirley Jackson Quotes

At first it upset me to realize how many people are, at heart, selfish. Now I take that in stride, but people's loneliness still gets to me.

Everyone is so obsessed with themselves nowadays that they have no time for me.

I'm not very interested in people. I recognize it in myself - there is a basic indifference toward people.

My first two novels featured narrators who were aggressively unattached: They couldn't form any sort of genuine relationship. So I had thoroughly explored the geography of loneliness and isolation.

I am loved by thousands, but I feel like the loneliest man in the world.

I was an incredibly misanthrope. I couldn't relate to people my age, and I'm not sure why, as I wasn't particularly smart or interesting

But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless.

She didn't know there were things worse than selfish.

I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid, unshakeably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.

I'm very selfish! I'm only thinking about how I would look in clothes, and not how we as a society might appear in those clothes.

See, Cameron. The only things I care about in this life are me, you, Mum, Dad, Steve and Sarah. And maybe Miffy. The rest of the world means nothing to me. The rest of the world can rot.' Am I like that too?' You? No way.' There's a slight gap in his words. 'And that's your problem. You care about everything.' He's right. I do.

But inside or out, I was alone, and I was beginning to wonder if I always had been, if I always would be.

Selfish people, with no heart to speak of, have the best time of it.

It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that every one was forsaking me and going away from me. Of course, any one is entitled to ask who "every one" was. For though I had been living almost eight years in Petersburg I had hardly an acquaintance. But what did I want with acquaintances? I was acquainted with all Petersburg as it was.

The loneliness of a one night stand is hard to take.

They were here all at once, but not together. Survival took self-absorption, and it made them strangers with nothing to do and no way to relate. Emergencies gave you a shape and a plot to take part in, while death was no story at all. It left you nothing.

But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

Loneliness Got a mind of its own The more people around The more you feel alone

A selfish person says, hey, me and my four at home and no more and whatever happens to you is OK. But it can't be that way. It cannot be that way.

I always felt a bit alone and isolated from other people...I did a lot of pretending as a child. It was my way of coping with the fact that I didn't feel like I fit in.

... we are all terribly alone no matter what people say.

Loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused.

There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one's.

But I would encourage anyone who has a crush on my character to watch it again and examine how selfish he is.