Shirley Jackson Quotes

I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human — I only love to be so.

As Mark Weiner puts it, whether you gain 50 pounds or lose 50 pounds, whether you have a sex change operation for that matter, that it doesn't matter, that there is some part of ourselves that we cannot escape.

Black Rock gives us all a chance to heal, to become ourselves.

The average person's ear weighs what you are, not what you were.

Beautiful? It's all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest... beautiful, no. Amusing, yes.

My face has always been my fortune anyway, not my body.

I mean, I feel like I've been pretending I was a werewolf since I was a little kid.

You can accept that perception of yourself that you're getting too old to be interesting or buyable. Or you can kind of do what you do and see what happens.

My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks.

We all have a wrong idea of ourselves. I am always changing, and I will continue to change. So, I never try to describe, define or judge myself.

As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.

I'm a werewolf trapped in a human body." "Well, yeah, that's kind of the definition." "No, really. I'm trapped." "Oh? When was the last time you shape-shifted?" "That's just it - I've never shape-shifted." "So you're not really a werewolf." "Not yet. But I was meant to be one, I just know it. How do I get a werewolf to attack me?" Stand in the middle of a forest under a full moon with a raw steak tied to your face, holding a sign that says, 'Eat me; I'm stupid'?

I'm a perfectly good carrot that everyone is trying to turn into a rose. As a carrot, I have good color and a nice leafy top. When I'm carved into a rose, I turn brown and wither.

"You look different now. Like a proper little girl," (said Gendry.) "I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns," (said Arya.) "Nice, though. A nice oak tree. [...] You even smell nice for a change."

It was not the case that one thing morphed into another, child into woman. You remained the person you were before things happened to you. The person you were when you thought a small cut string could determine the course of a year. You also became the person to whom certain things happened. Who passed into the realm where you no longer questioned the notion of being trapped in one form. You took on that form, that identity, hoped for its recognition from others, hoped someone would love it and you.

People … don't want to be cured or changed or eliminated. They want to be whoever it is that they've come to be.

I tried to be someone else, but nothing seemed to change. I know now, this is who I really am inside. I've finally found myself, fighting for a chance. I know now, this is who I really am.

When Dawn looked at Vic, she saw Vic exactly as he wanted to be seen. Whereas Vic's parents couldn't help seeing who he used to be, and so many friends and strangers couldn't help seeing who he didn't want to be anymore, Dawn only saw him. Call it a blur if you want, but Dawn didn't see a blur. She saw a very distinct, very clear person.

The gospel doesn't just free me from what people think of me, but also from what I think of me.

And my identity...I never really wondered about it because, unfortunately, I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.

I may be a real bad boy, but baby I'm a real good man.

What is true about a person? Would I change in the same way the river changes color but still be the same person?... And then I realized it was the first time I could see the power of the wind. I couldn't see the wind itself, but I could see it carried water that filled the rivers and shaped the countryside.

Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside --from others. We do not accept it willingly.

Even Photoshop couldn't change me.