We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

I can now say this without judgement, I am a dark woman. I acknowledge the dirt in my life, and the disposable value of women in the world, all of which I cannot change but survive through, with a smile and a desire to gouge someone’s eyes out. So reading Shirley Jackson, my very first Shirley Jackson, was reassuring.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/89724.We_Have_Always_Lived_in_the_Castle

Below are some quotes, amazing ones they are:

I always thought about rot when I came toward the row of stores; I thought about burning black painful rot that ate away from inside, hurting dreadfully. I wished it on the village.

“I can’t help it when people are frightened,” says Merricat. “I always want to frighten them more.”

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this…”

“Oh Constance, we are so happy.”

All the Blackwood women had taken the food that came from the ground and preserved it, and the deeply colored rows of jellies and pickles and bottled vegetables and fruit, maroon and amber and dark rich green, stood side by side in our cellar and would stand there forever, a poem by the Blackwood women.

Slowly the pattern of our days grew, and shaped itself into a happy life.

I’m going to put death in all their food and watch them die.

Poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of.

I disliked having a fork pointed at me and I disliked the sound of the voice never stopping; I wished he would put food on the fork and put it into his mouth and strangle himself.

“It’s wrong to hate them,” Constance said, “it only weakens you,”