Shirley Jackson Quotes

I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.

Not a living thing was to be seen and the cottages that sat huddled close to the ground remained fast shut; the smoke from the chimneys alone still gave a sign of life.

The house clock, place certain there at the bottom of things, strikes the half hour dry and null. All is so much, all is so deep, all is so dark and cold!

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor hear her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.

You are forever alone.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

Weeks go by, and I don't talk to another living soul.

The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life.

No one is talking. No one is emailing. No one is texting. It's spooky and scary.

The emptiness was intense, like the stillness in a great factory when the machinery stops running.

Together, we looked down at the tiny house, the sole thing on this vast, flat surface. Like the only person living on the moon. It could be either lonely or peaceful, depending on how you looked at it. "It's a start," I said.

Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former throng and pageant.

Now the windows, blinded by the glare of the empty square, had fallen asleep. The balconies declared their emptiness to heaven; the open doorways smelt of coolness and wine.

This self now as I leant over the gate looking down over fields rolling in waves of colour beneath me made no answer. He threw up no opposition. He attempted no phrase. His fist did not form. I waited. I listened. Nothing came, nothing. I cried then with a sudden conviction of complete desertion. Now there is nothing. No fin breaks the waste of this immeasurable sea. Life has destroyed me. No echo comes when I speak, no varied words. This is more truly death than the death of friends, than the death of youth.

It's the silence I imagine in the rest of the world, the silence of an endless ocean and uninhabitable island, a silence that can be seen from space.

As I followed Margo's directions through the maze of one-way streets, we saw a few people sleeping on the sidewalk or sitting on benches, but nobody was moving. Margo rolled down the window, and I felt the thick air blow across my face, warmer than night ought to be. I glanced over and saw strands of her hair blowing all around her face. Even though I could see her there, I felt entirely alone among these big and empty buildings, like I'd survived the apocalypse and the world had been given to me, this whole and amazing and endless world, mine for the exploring.

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more.

Earth, left silent by the wind of night,Seems shrunken 'neath the gray unmeasured height.

I am entirely alone. I and my shadow fill the universe.

I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing.”.

I am out of humanity's reach.I must finish my journey alone,Never hear the sweet music of speech;I start at the sound of my own.

I am nothing. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.

We wake in the night, to stereophonic silence.

He could start a row in an empty house.