Shirley Jackson Quotes

It is not because I do not love my adopted land - it is the natural feeling of one far from home, who remembers those happy, carefree days when life flowed at full tide, without responsibility, flashing past one like the drama in a fascinating story of adventure and romance.

Travel is impossible, but daydreaming about travel is easy.

It is a great feeling to know that from a window I can go to books to cans of beer to past loves. And from these gather enough dream to sneak out a back door.

When I was 35 I realized that I was still thinking a lot about what it would be like to go to Narnia. To really go - not just in a daydream, or in a children's book, but what it would actually feel like, physically, psychologically, every other way. The idea was haunting me.

As a youngster I was a great dreamer, reading many books of adventure and walking lonely miles with my head in the clouds.

I'd stare up at the sky and just dream a lot. Still do. I dreamed that I didn't belong here, that I was going to travel a lot.

Where ever I am I always find myself looking out the window wishing I was somewhere else.

Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.

As a child, I dreamed that my bed could fly and glide and swoop and hover high over the countryside near my home while, snug and secure, I looked down in wonder at the great carpet of life that seemed so perfect beneath me.

I had a very happy childhood, but I still used my imagination as a leisure resort.

I like to escape; I like to write when I go on a walk - I'm kind of very fairy that way. I get inspired by the wind. Or when I daydream, that's when I write.

I used to dream of being other places, other people. It was an escape for me.

To be honest, Peter Pan was one of those fairy tales that I sort of related to, and I think that's the case with a lot of kids. The whole idea of escapism really resonates with a lot of kids.

There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass with a fragrant young woman and we quoted e.e. cummings back and forth.

I think childhood is to everyone a lost land.

When I was in school, I used to look out the window and see the big red double-deck buses driving by. It just looked so free.

I think we all miss our childhood.

When you're around kids you can be a little kid yourself and pretend that life is magic and you don't have to be one of those sweaty people going to work every day.

I still close my eyes and go home - I can always draw from that.

In any case, suffice it to say I enjoyed hearing about faraway places. I had stocked up a whole store of these places, like a bear getting ready for hibernation. I'd close my eyes, and streets would materialize, rows of houses take shape. I could hear people's voices, feel the gentle, steady rhythm of their lives, those people so distant, whom I'd probably never know.

When I see birches bend to left and right... I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

I don't think it necessarily makes me want to go back to my 20s, but what I love about playing any type of character is the escapism.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~ And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

My home was in a pleasant place outside of Philadelphia. But I really lived, truly lived, somewhere else. I lived within the covers of books.