Gossip says she hanged herself from the turret on the tower, but when you have a house like Hill House with a tower and a turret, gossip would hardly allow you to hang yourself anywhere else.
Shirley JacksonRead
We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the idea of confronting and understanding the imperfections and flaws in something or someone.
In this quote, Shirley Jackson expresses a contemplative journey toward a house that embodies ugliness and ruin, symbolizing deeper themes of shame and discomfort. The slow movement toward the house suggests a careful examination of this ugliness, implying that acknowledging and understanding imperfections is a necessary part of confronting reality and perhaps revealing hidden aspects of beauty or truth within it.
Themes
UglinessUnderstandingShameRuinBeauty
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about art and architecture, this quote could illustrate how beauty can coexist with imperfection.
More from Shirley Jackson
All quotes →It watches," he added suddenly. "The house. It watches every move you make.
Shirley JacksonRead
There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.
Shirley JacksonRead
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.
Shirley JacksonRead
I can't help it when people are frightened," says Merricat. "I always want to frighten them more.
Shirley JacksonRead
I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.
Shirley JacksonRead
Similar quotes
Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.
Edward SaidRead
What it felt to me was like the dissolution of my idea of myself. I felt like separateness evaporated. I felt this tremendous sense of oneness. I'm quite an erratic thinker, quite an adrenalized person, but through meditation, I found this beautiful serenity and selfless connection. My tendency towards selfishness, I felt that kind of exposed as a superficial and pointless perspective to have. I felt very relaxed, a sense of oneness. I felt love.
Russell BrandRead
Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that you toast in champagne. On the contrary, it's hard graft and a long-distance run, all alone, very exhausting. Alone in a dreary room, alone in the dock before the judges, and alone to make up your mind, before yourself and before the judgement of others. At the end of every freedom there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear.
Albert CamusRead
To live for a principle, for the triumph of some reform by which all mankind are to be lifted up to be wedded to an idea may be, after all, the holiest and happiest of marriages.
Elizabeth Cady StantonRead
In violence there is often the quality of yearning - the yearning for completion. For closure. For that which is absent and would if present bring to fulfillment. For the body without which the wing is a useless frozen ornament. ("A Short Guide To The City")
Peter StraubRead
I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read