Quote

Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow the humor of its basic assumption about how it is possible to teach things to children.

Shirley Jackson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Shirley Jackson
Age: 48 †
Born: 1916
Born: December 14
Died: 1965
Died: September 8
Author
Journalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Writer
San Francisco County
California
Shirley Hardie Jackson
System
Public
Teach
Presently
Possible
Assumption
School
Organized
Nothing
Basic
Children
Allow
Things
Humor

More quotes by Shirley Jackson

Image
We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.
Shirley Jackson
Image
I delight in what I fear.
Shirley Jackson
Image
In ten years I will be a beautiful charming lovely lady writer without any husband or children but lots of lovers and everyone will read the books I write and want to marry me but I will never marry any of them. I will have lots of money and jewels too.
Shirley Jackson
Image
It was one of those winter days that suddenly dream of spring, when the sky is blue and soft and clear, and the wind has dropped its voice and whispers instead of screaming, and the sun is out and the trees look surprised, and over everything there is the faintest, palest tint of green.
Shirley Jackson
Image
I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.
Shirley Jackson
Image
You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine, is it still in use? You are wondering, has it been cleaned? You may very well ask, was it thoroughly washed?
Shirley Jackson
Image
I can't help it when people are frightened, says Merricat. I always want to frighten them more.
Shirley Jackson
Image
It is only with the eyes open that a corporeal form returns, and assembles itself firmly around the hard core of sight.
Shirley Jackson
Image
February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back any air of summer.
Shirley Jackson
Image
I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.
Shirley Jackson
Image
Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.
Shirley Jackson
Image
The sight of one's own heart is degrading people are not meant to look inward - that's why they've been given bodies, to hide their souls.
Shirley Jackson
Image
I shall weave a suit of leaves. At once. With acorns for buttons.
Shirley Jackson
Image
Fear, the doctor said, is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.
Shirley Jackson
Image
I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains no pertinent facts.
Shirley Jackson
Image
We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved.
Shirley Jackson
Image
It has long been my belief that in times of great stress, such as a 4-day vacation, the thin veneer of family wears off almost at once, and we are revealed in our true personalities.
Shirley Jackson
Image
For plain and fancy worrying, give me a new mother every time.
Shirley Jackson
Image
in all the world there is not someone who does not believe something.
Shirley Jackson
Image
Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven.
Shirley Jackson