Lubyanka Basement Quotes

Oaths were important to word correctly, but Gregory could be forgiven for his lapse. It wasn't every day that his demon lover took a member of his choir hostage, beat the shit out of the guy and kept him a starving captive in her basement. ~ Debra Dunbar

Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? "Is that a crime?" I countered, and they all laughed. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

We've got this idea that there are only two options in grief: you're either going to be stuck in your pain, doomed to spend the rest of your life rocking in a corner in your basement wearing sackcloth, or you're going to triumph over grief, be transformed, and come back even better than you were before.
Just two options. On, off. Eternally broken or completely healed.
It doesn't seem to matter that nothing else in life is like that. Somehow when it comes to grief, the entire breadth of human experience goes out the window. ~ Megan Devine

One of the great truths of Scientology is that increased awareness is the only factor which offers any road out. That is an awfully simple truth, but you'll find out that people don't know that. They think that less awareness is the road out - and that is the road down into the basement. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

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

Do everything as if unto the Lord. Offer up everything as if for the Lord, including jars of olives to the food pantry or leftover loaves of bread. Years later, that's finally how I make sense of it, where it settles out for me. If Jesus knocks on my door today, will I rummage through my home and give him the food I don't like, the outgrown jackets with stains and a broken zipper, the dirty Crock-Pot in the basement, the one with the chipped lid and mice nesting inside I've yet to find time to toss into the Salvation Army's dumpster? ~ Christa Parrish

Reading Chip's college orientation materials, Alfred had been struck by the sentence New England winters can be very cold. The curtains he'd bought at Sears were of a plasticized brown-and-pink fabric with a backing of foam rubber. They were heavy and bulky and stiff. "You'll appreciate these on a cold night," he told Chip. "You'll be surprised how much they cut down drafts." But Chip's freshman roommate was a prep-school product named Roan McCorkle who would soon be leaving thumbprints, in what appeared to be Vaseline, on the fifth-grade photo of Denise. Roan laughed at the curtains and Chip laughed, too. He put them back in the box and stowed the box in the basement of the dorm and let it gather mold there for the next four years. He had nothing against the curtains personally. They were simply curtains and they wanted no more than what any curtains wanted - to hang well, to exclude light to the best of their ability, to be neither too small nor too large for the window that it was their task in life to cover; to be pulled this way in the evening and that way in the morning; to stir in the breezes that came before rain on a summer night; to be much used and little noticed. There were numberless hospitals and retirement homes and budget motels, not just in the Midwest but in the East as well, where these particularly brown rubber-backed curtains could have had a long and useful life. It wasn't their fault that they didn't belong in a dorm room. They'd betrayed no urge to ris ~ Jonathan Franzen

You never know what the vodka will bring," I laughed.
"Oh, like the time you caught my hair on fire at the candlelight party in Mel's basement! That was the craziest thing that I ever had happen to me. If you hadn't switched to water, I would have been bald!"
-Cora, Nessa ~ Andrea Heltsley

I had survived the work gangs in the ghetto. Baked bread under cover of night. Hidden in a pigeon coop. Had a midnight bar mitzvah in the basement of an abandoned building. I had watched my parents be taken away to their deaths, had avoided Amon Goeth and his dogs, had survived the salt mines of Wieliczka and the sick games of Trzebinia. I had done so much to live, and now, here, the Nazis were going to take all that away with their furnace!
I started to cry, the first tears I had shed since Moshe died. Why had I worked so hard to survive if it was always going to end like this? If I had known, I wouldn't have bothered. I would have let them kill me back in the ghetto. It would have been easier that way. All that I had done was for nothing. ~ Alan Gratz

A couple of hours after Rik left, Trance was still on the floor of the basement dungeon, staring at the mess around him.
"Trance?"
He looked up to find Wyatt at the bottom of the stairs, staring at him. Wyatt gave a long whistle as he looked around the room and then again at Trance. "Orgy gone wild?"
Trance groaned. "Is there a fucking sign on my door that says 'Bother Me Now'? ~ Sydney Croft

Sunday morning dawned bright and cloudless. Ernest awoke early as always. He put on the red "Emporor's robe" and padded softly down the carpeted stairway. The early sunlight lay in pools on the living room floor. He had noticed that the guns were locked up in the basement. But the keys, as he well knew, were on the window ledge above the kitchen sink. He tiptoed down the basement stairs and unlocked the storage room. It smelled as dank as a grave. He chose a double-barreled Boss shotgun with a tight choke. He had used it for years of pigeon shooting. He took some shells from one of the boxes in the storage room, closed and locked the door, and climbed the basement stairs. If he saw the bright day outside, it did not deter him. He crossed the living room to the front foyer, a shrinelike entryway five by seven feet, with oak-paneled walls and a floor of linoleum tile. He had held for years to the maxim: "il faut (d'abord) durer". Now it had been succeeded by another: "il faut (apres tout) mourir". The idea, if not the phrase, filled all his mind. He slipped in two shells, lowered the gun butt carefully to the floor, leaned forward, pressed the twin barrels against his forehead just above the eyebrows, and tripped both triggers. ~ Carlos Baker

There'll be a war," my mother said, her lit cigarette as though forgotten in front of her face… She couldn't have meant war… Soon enough even my father would realize that we were stupid enough to fling a hefty piece of wet Balkan shit right into the blades of a turning fan and expect not to get soiled. The war would come just as prophesied, and for years a part of me would believe that…I had somehow caused it all, and I would feel guilty for all of the dead and the dead-to-be, and sitting in the basement with my town groaning from destruction above my head, I would wish for a time machine and another go at that day. (p.58) ~ Ismet Prcic

You can't be a legend in your parent's basement. ~ Joe Walsh

If any "white supremacist" were really a "supremacist", he wouldn't be living in his mom's basement. ~ Mark Steyn

Ok. Listen. I not know where all you morons come from but holy water no hurt Bigfoot. Garlic and Crucifix also no. Fire, Pitchfork, Silver Bullet OK. Cryptonite do nothing. It not even real. Please stop sending letters asking "What you vulnerability? What Bigfoot?" Like I tell. What next me bank account number? Why not you invest time in moving out of parent basement? Maybe have sex or something. Yes I be talking to you Steve. Youuu! Stalking is a crime Steve. ~ Graham Roumieu

It was about having a box in the attic or basement or attic or garage, something we could return to over and over again, something that said, this is us, this is where we were last year, and this is where we'll stay, and this is where we'll pile on the memories, over and over again, until there are so many memories that it's blinding, the brightness of family, the way love and nurturing is like a color you can't name because it's so new. ~ Carrie Brownstein

After we hung up, I took the joint. If I was going to die here, in the creepy basement out of a horror movie, in an epic snowstorm that was like an icy prison, with a wife unwilling to pretend-like Bananarama to maybe save her husband's life, I should at least go out with a smile on my face. ~ Eric Spitznagel

I signal with an independent label, Continuum. After that I put out a totally independent record, sold fourteen thousand of them from my basement, bought a house, started raising my kid, made a decent living. ~ Kid Rock

My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace. I became a street kid. Occasionally, I'd live with aunts or uncles, then I'd run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does. ~ Gary Paulsen

Callum's basement had always been off-limits to me, and I wasn't dumb enough to believe the restriction was in place because that was where he hid my Christmas presents. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

He sat down among the evidence at a barren communal desk in the basement of the station. He looked through the stack of extra fliers that my father had made up. He had memorized my face, but still he looked at them. He had come to believe that the best hope in my case might be the recent rise in development in the area. With all the land churning and changing, perhaps other clues whould be found that would provide the answer he needed.
In the bottom of the box was the bag with my jingle-bell hat. When he'd handled it to my mother, she had collasped on the rug. He still couldn't pinpoint the moment he'd fallen in love with her. I knew it was the day he'd sat in our family room while my mother drew stick figures on butcher paper and Buckley and Nate slept toe to toe on the couch. I felt sorry for him. He had tried to solve my murder and he failed. He had tried to love my mother and he had failed.
Len looked at the drawing of the cornfield that Lindsey had stolen and forced himself to acknowledge this: in his cautiousness, he had allowed a murderer to get away. He could not shake his guilt. He knew, if no one else did, that by being with my mother in the mall that day he was the one to blame for George Harvey's freedom.
He took his wallet out of his back pocket and laid down the photos of all the unsolved cases he had ever worked on. Among them were his wife's. He turned them all face-down. 'Gone,' he wrote on each one of them. He would no longer wait for a date t ~ Alice Sebold

My high-school a cappella teacher would embarrass me in front of the choir. 'Mavis, you're in the basement. Mavis, you're singing with the boys.' I said, 'Mr. Finch, my voice isn't soprano. I can't sing up there with the girls.' So I just got out of the choir. ~ Mavis Staples

We rode the basement trains all night, speeding through the subterrains. I held her chin in the cup of my hand and her eyes held tight to mine, imploring me to reveal to her the mystery of that which awaits us on the pavement above, come the day we ascend from this labyrinth of trains ... 'We will ride these beautiful basement trains forever,' said I, 'nothing awaits us; and as your beauty folds, so do my dreams. Come, my love, let us wander these tunnels of the endless city. This holy, endless city! ~ Roman Payne

When I was about five my dad built a stage for me in our basement. A full stage, with a curtain, a backdrop and a dressing room. There were three colored spotlights - a red one, a white one, and a blue one. Blue was for nighttime scenes, and red was for when we were in hell. If the neighborhood kids wanted to use the stage, they had to incorporate me into the play. ~ Paul Reubens

I'm used to the other kind of party. The kind where you get to someone's house and their mom shows you down to the basement, and there's junk food and Apples to Apples and a bunch of people randomly singing. Maybe some people playing video games. ~ Becky Albertalli

It is 12:23 in the morning, and people are coming to be here, coming to help. They saw what happened, and they can't stay in their houses. Not just Harry and Craig's friends. But their friends' parents, too. Jim from the tech crew has sped over with more lights from his basement. There have to be at least a dozen people. Then more than a dozen. Smita's mom is here. Two more police officers. And a man Harry's never seen before walks up and goes straight to Mr. Bellamy, saying, "I'm staying right here with you." They wear matching rings. ~ David Levithan

I felt like the blonde in every horror movie who hears a noise in the basement and goes to investigate alone. Sometimes you smell the stupid all around you, but you step in it anyway. ~ Ann Aguirre

Disconnecting from one's community is a personal choice, of course, but it ends up having social implications ["The Basement," The Awl, Feb 5, 2015]. ~ Ariana Kelly

He was delivering my body to my people.

He could have been shot. He could have been attacked by other angels. If I was actually dead, he should have left me in the basement to be buried in rubble. He should have chased after Beliel and taken his wings back. He should have thwarted Uriel and avoided being seen by the other angels.

Instead, he delivered me to my family. ~ Susan Ee

Every advance in information technology involves choosing what you want to preserve and what you want to ditch. Scanning rare books on to microfilm is a costly business. The library won't let you do it yourself - they decide first which books should be scanned and which should just rot away in the basement.
Against that eventuality, people should start hoarding the kind of books committees of rational people will decide against scanning into a database. ~ Robert Twigger

So, what you're saying," Dad says, "is that when you've been telling your mother and me that you are studying at a friend's, you've actually been roaming the streets hunting monsters."
"No, not always," I say. "Most of the time I was at Gretchen's loft, studying. Training."
"Gretchen's loft?" Mom echoes. "That's where you were last night?"
My cheeks burn. "No, I was in Greer's basement."
"Gretchen's loft blew up," Greer offers. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

He'd wanted to accompany her, but both of them knew it'd be smarter for him to stay home.
In other words, neither of them trusts me.
And who can really blame them?
The last time they both went away together, a stalker broke into our house, our basement turned into a scene out of Fright Night, and I nearly gave my boyfriend a concussion. ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

Spending time around her house, I came across a cache of 16mm movies in her basement. It turned out that Barbara [Stanwyck] had a lot of her own movies, and I convinced her to spend some time watching them with me. I ran the projector. She had prints of Union Pacific, Ball of Fire, and Baby Face, among others. She didn't particularly like watching them, but she did enjoy reminiscing about their production: how she got the part, what the location was like, that sort of thing. She liked people with humor and always spoke highly of Gary Cooper, Joel McCrea, and Frank Capra. Oddly enough, she wasn't crazy about Preston Sturges; she seemed to feel that he expended all his charm and humor for his movies and that there wasn't anything left for his actors. In broad outline, all this sounds a little bit like the scene in Sunset Boulevard where Gloria Swanson sits with William Holden and watches a scene from Queen Kelly, rhapsodizing about her own face. But Barbara couldn't have cared less about how she looked; as I watched her films with her, it was clear that, for her, the movies were a job she loved, as well as a social occasion for a woman who was otherwise something of a loner. ~ Robert J. Wagner

Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. ~ Julia Child

The year she died Victor did serious time among the books. He schooled himself from the boxes. He liked to read. He liked crashing down there in the basement with the smell of concrete and earth, liked reading his mother's old books, liked the idea that he had inherited more than his dark skin and dark hair from the woman who disappeared. ~ Sunil Yapa

We see a lot of startup companies, people that have a home-based office, they've been working out of their basement for two or three years, and now their basement or kids cannot accommodate them any longer. ~ Nancy Fox

They don't make morgues with windows. In fact, if the geography allows for it, they hardly ever make morgues above the ground. I guess it's partly because it must be eisier to refrigerate a bunch of coffin-sized chambers in a room insulated by the earth. But that can't be all there is to it. Under the earth means a lot more than relative altitude. It's where dead things fit. Graves are under the earth. So are Hell, Gehenna, Hades, and a dozen other reported afterlives.
Maybe it says somthing about people. Maybe for us, under the earth is a subtle and profound statement. Maybe ground level provides us with a kind of symbolic boundary marker, an artificial construct that helps us remember that we are alive. Mabye it helps us push death's shadow back from our lives.
I live in a basement apartment and like it. What does that say about me?
Probably that I overanalyze things. ~ Jim Butcher

The debt is like a crazy aunt we keep down in the basement. All the neighbors know she's there, but nobody wants to talk about her. ~ Ross Perot

Just like every kid who comes into show business on some level, I used to put shows on in my basement. I even started with doing tricks and having a ventriloquist dummy. ~ Don Scardino

I barely even know how I didn't feel. I didn't feel like reading a newspaper, or having a coffee, or going for a jog, or watching television. Nor did I feel like crying behind the boiler in the basement. Or like trying out for something. I did't even feel like I had lost someone I deeply loved; this was different from that. I didn't feel like going to another movie and asking for extra butter on my popcorn. I didn't feel like talking to someone who would understand. ~ Rivka Galchen

I was writing full time after quitting a job as a high school English teacher, and I hadn't been able to sell anything, and my bank account was down to zero, and all of my friends were like 'What are you doing in the basement, when are you going to get a real job?', and my parents thought I'd completely lost it. ~ Matthew Quick

I got addicted to Tetris, playing it in my basement, I was missing all these airplane flights over it. After the fourth one that I missed, I realized I needed to get rid of this thing - so ever since then, I don't play video games any more. ~ Bam Margera

Accommodate the quickly expanding population. Intrigued, Warren contacted religious leaders in Southern California who told him that many locals self-identified as Christian but didn't attend services. In the dusty, dimly lit basement of that university ~ Charles Duhigg

I'd spent countless hours on the couch in the basement, staring at the ceiling wondering what she was doing. Her laughter, her smile, the feel of her body next to mine, and the regret that I let her walk away too easily haunted me. Taking the risk, I entwined my fingers with hers. Odds were I'd never get the chance to be this close again. ~ Katie McGarry

The Tender Place

Your temples , where the hair crowded in ,
Were the tender place. Once to check
I dropped a file across the electrodes
of a twelve-volt battery -- it exploded
Like a grenade. Somebody wired you up.
Somebody pushed the lever. They crashed
The thunderbolt into your skull.
In their bleached coats, with blenched faces,
They hovered again
To see how you were, in your straps.
Whether your teeth were still whole .
The hand on the calibrated lever
Again feeling nothing
Except feeling nothing pushed to feel
Some squirm of sensation . Terror
Was the cloud of you
Waiting for these lightnings. I saw
An oak limb sheared at a bang.
You your Daddy's leg . How many seizures
Did you suffer this god to grab you
By the roots of the hair? The reports
Escaped back into clouds. What went up
Vaporized? Where lightning rods wept copper
And the nerve· threw off its skin
Like a burning child
Scampering out of the bomb-flash. They dropped you
A rigid bent bit of wire
Across the Boston City grid. The lights
In the Senate House dipped
As your voice dived inwards
Right through the bolt-hole basement.
Came up, years later,
Over-exposed, like an X-ray --
Brain-map still dark-patched
With the scorched-earth scars
Of your retreat . And your words ,
Faces reversed from ~ Ted Hughes

But my husband came from a small town and hardworking parents like I did, and I don't think we've lost that mind-set. We don't have a bowling alley in our basement. We don't have houses on the beach and one in New York and one in L.A. ~ Carrie Underwood

When I was twelve, the biggest name in Rock and Roll was Elvis Presley. I bought an EP, "King Creole". I hid it in the basement, but my mother found it. ~ Klaus Nomi