We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.

"What are you reading, my dear? A pretty sight, a lady with a book."

Constance could put names to all the growing things, but I was content to know them by their way and place of growing, and their unfailing offers of refuge.

"fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar."

I can't help it when people are frightened; I always want to frighten them more."

All cat stories start with the statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this, and I lay with my head close to Jonas and listened.

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.

"I am going to put death in all their food and watch them die."

"Poor strangers," I said. "They have so much to be afraid of."