The Yellow Wallpaper quotes

“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”

— Spoken by a character

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.

The front pattern does move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!

There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.

Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able—to dress and entertain, and order things.

I never saw a worse paper in my life.

One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.

This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down.

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

It does not do to trust people too much.

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here!

Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be.

Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!

I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.