Shirley Jackson Quotes

I don't have control over what's on screen, and that's terrifying.

I've lost a lot of control in my life.

She wept with shame for her lack of will and with fear for a love she couldn't control.

Adults under threat feel like children.

I woke up nights, worrying that Lotus was out of control - that no one would know what to do.

Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.

I left Nixon, feeling ... like a very small creature, skirting the shadows of encircling powers that would not hesitate to crush me as impersonally as a steam roller crushes a bug.

There are moments when your mind is very vulnerable. You feel a lot of doubts.

I know what it is like to feel vulnerable and fearful during a difficult time.

Insecurity, for me, feels like the sensation of suffocating.

Panic implies that there is no rational thought taking place. That we are frozen and incapable of adjusting. Powerless to logic, and subject to seemingly unthinkable behavior.

My anxiety stems from my lack of control no matter what.

Sometimes I feel I don't know even know how to run.

Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.

It's hard to stay calm when you're terrified, helpless, alone, at the mercy of men with no mercy at all.

How does fear become so powerful? We can’t see it. We can’t touch it, yet it gets its claws in us and begins to control us. Sigh. I hate feeling afraid, and I hate, hate, HATE feeling out of control.

I stand there, feeling broken and small, thousands of eyes trained on me.

I do not have easy days at home now and I drift between fear and helplessness in sunny rooms where it is unspeakably cold. Strange shudders of transformation, bodily experienced to the point of vulnerability, visions of mysteries until the certainty of having died, ecstasies to the point of stony petrifaction, and a continuation of dreaming sad dreams.

I felt impotent and out of control, which I really, really hate. I had to find sanctuary in a place where I could gather my thoughts and regain my strength.

Anyone else feel like that? Like your life's a big act. Like you're trying to be a man when you're just a scared kid, trying to keep under control when you really want to scream, cry, or maybe hit someone. Ever feel like you're breathing underwater and you have to stop because you're gulping in too much fluid.

You have no control [over natural disaster]. That's what's scary about it. You're helpless. That feeling of helplessness is really scary.

I did not enter into silence. Silence captured me.

My heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.

Maybe sometimes you just feel like everything can be taken from you all at once.

There's no way I can be tossed around like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.