basement QUOTES

21 " When Sally stopped crying, she found herself alone, the cold draft of the window at her neck, and on both sides, the rows of doors went on and on, diminishing to nothing, the end.
'What fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight, oh.' What glories.
Mathilde came. And though she appeared to be the... same sweet girl Sally had been afraid of, she was not. Sally saw the flint in her. Mathilde can save Lotto from his own laziness, Sally thought. But here they were, a year later, and he was still ordinary. The chorus caught in her throat.
A stranger hurrying as fast as he could over the icy sidewalks looked in. He saw a circle of singing people bathed in the clean, white light from a tree, and his heart did a soumersault. And the image stayed with him, it merged with him even as he came home to his own children, who were already asleep in their beds, to his wife crossly putting together the tricycle without the screwdriver he'd run out to borrow. It remained long after his children ripped open their gifts and abandoned their toys and puddles of paper and grew too old for them and left their house and parents and childhoods, so that he and his wife gaped at each other in bewilderment as to how it had happened so terribly swiftly. All those years, the singers in the soft light in the basement apartment crystalized in his mind, became the very idea of what happiness should look like. "

― Lauren Groff , Fates and Furies

23 " Some alters are what Dr Ross describes in Multiple Personality Disorder as 'fragments'. which are 'relatively limited psychic states that express only one feeling, hold one memory, or carry out a limited task in the person's life. A fragment might be a frightened child who holds the memory of one particular abuse incident.' In complex multiples, Dr Ross continues, the 'personalities are relatively full-bodied, complete states capable of a range of emotions and behaviours.' The alters will have 'executive control some substantial amount of time over the person's life'. He stresses, and I repeat his emphasis, 'Complex MPD with over 15 alter personalities and complicated amnesia barriers are associated with 100 percent frequency of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse.' Did I imagine the castle, the dungeon, the ritual orgies and violations? Did Lucy, Billy, Samuel, Eliza, Shirley and Kato make it all up? I went back to the industrial estate and found the castle. It was an old factory that had burned to the ground, but the charred ruins of the basement remained. I closed my eyes and could see the black candles, the dancing shadows, the inverted pentagram, the people chanting through hooded robes. I could see myself among other children being abused in ways that defy imagination. I have no doubt now that the cult of devil worshippers was nothing more than a ring of paedophiles, the satanic paraphernalia a cover for their true lusts: the innocent bodies of young children. "

― , Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

25 " Nora had been training herself not to think too much about her kids. Not because she wanted to forget them - not at all - but because she wanted to remember them more accurately. For the same reason, she tried not to look too often at old photographs or videos...After a while, these scraps hardened into a kind of official narrative that crowded out thousands of equally valid memories, shunting the losers to some cluttered basement storage area in her brain. "

― Tom Perrotta , The Leftovers

27 " Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands. "

― Markus Zusak , The Book Thief

29 " I'm back in the basement of the Ascension Catholic Church, Francisco. And Little Suzie is here. She's lying on an alter, and they're hurting her. The bastards. They're hurting her. There is blood all over the place. There are candles burning and people chanting." I could hardly believe what I was seeing and I cried out, " What is this? I don't understand. What the hell is this?" " Ask your unconscious mind to tell you, Suzie," he responded, ever so gently. " Ask." I did ask. And the answer swept over me with a force so strong that I felt as if I had been knocked backward." Lord! Oh, Lord. This is satanic ritual abuse, Francisco. That's what this is! That's what this is!" I screamed. " Satanic ritual abuse. And they're using Little Suzie as part of their goddamned ritual.p150 "

31 " Without unreservedly surrendering myself to God, whatever place I might raise myself to remains nothing more than a step or possibly two off the hard basement floor of life, for of myself I can be utterly assured that I will never step out of the basement. "

― Craig D. Lounsbrough , Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone: Simple Truths for Profound Living

33 " When I was a boy, that was all I wanted—to grow a pair of wings and get up into the sky. I had a basement full of failed wing projects. Boards and capes and motors, even a pile of found feathers I once tried to glue together with a bottle of Elmer’s; you should have seen your grandmother’s face. But I never got any higher than the backyard fence I’d launch from. I never got inside a cloud. Your raven did. "

― Beth Kephart , Undercover

35 " Is there a reason why you’re standing there, staring out the window and watching the neighbors? Are we preparing to kill them and drag them down to the basement and bury them alive? "

― R.L. Mathewson , Christmas from Hell (Neighbor from Hell, #7)

37 " Tana would sit near the door to the basement with fingers in her ears, tears and snot running down her face as she cried and cried and cried. And little Pearl would toddle up, crying, too. They cried while they ate their cereal, cried while they watched cartoons, and cried themselves to sleep at night, huddled together in Tana's little bed. 'Make her stop' Pearl said, but Tana couldn't. "

― Holly Black , The Coldest Girl in Coldtown