The Yellow Wallpaper Quotes

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 cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

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

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.

I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.

I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very ' bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so:...

I always lock the door when I creep by daylight.

It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

John doesn't know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.

I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.

John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him.

He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.