The Underground Quotes

When drum'n'bass happened, when the two-step/garage thing happened, there was a chart smash every week; it operated on the underground and the pinnacle of pop mainstream at the same time. ~ Kieran Hebden

Vampires used to be the Dracula types, but in the last ten years most of them have become weak, brooding androgynes that only go after teenagers. A friend of mine took the opportunity to rid his whole city of them after the forth Mormon Vamps book hit and the sparkle meme was at its strongest."

"So does that make Ms. Mormon Sparkle Vamp a hero?"

"Of a sort. Before they started to sparkle, there were a lot of vamps who were tortured antiheroes, thanks to Rice and Whedon."

Ree grimaced. "Do you know if she was clued in?"

Eastwood shrugged. "She's very secretive, no one in the Underground has been able to say for sure. It's all rumor. My guess is she lost someone to a vampire and decided the greatest revenge she could inflict was to turn them into a laughing stock. ~ Michael R. Underwood

Hitler's one genuine obsession was the underground currents. He believed in the theory of the hollow earth, Hohlweltlehre. ~ Umberto Eco

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters. ~ Margaret Atwood

They were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining. ~ Jack Kerouac

This was the Goblin King. The abductor of maidens, the punisher of misdeeds, the Lord of Mischief and the Underground. ~ S. Jae-Jones

Do not fear, you mind may be criticizes for losing track. Enjoy the fact that most may not ride the same train of thought. ~ C. Jerry

It's a robust time, probably the most fertile time for the underground and for revolution since Nixon. I'm not talking about political overthrow; I'm talking about just general cultural revolution. Bush has polarised the country and is creating this breeding ground for an opposition. In the next couple of months, they'll probably make it unpatriotic to be Democrat. It's pretty crazy. ~ Neil Young

The idea that I would get to see this revival was almost overwhelming. And in the last decade or so, I believe we have seen this revival begin to sweep the earth. We have seen amazing moves of God in Africa Recently, I was in China and met with the underground church. I was told there are at least forty-five million Full Gospel Christians in China. I discovered a depth of prayer and integrity there that I have not felt anywhere else in the world So I believe we are seeing Wigglesworth's prophecy begin to be fulfilled. We are seeing the first stages of it. ~ Lester Sumrall

(Taken from the scene in which protagonist Rebeka is caught snooping around down in the underground floors of Project Code-X...)
"I was just curious as to what was down here," I said boldly.
He studied me, evaluating the situation carefully. His face relaxed.
"They say curiosity is the mark of a great scientist," he mused light-heartedly. "It is often the loss of that child-like curiosity that ends the career of many a great scientist prematurely. Their minds go dead and they are no longer inspired. Once that light goes, they are completely and utterly useless to me."
He had a habit of ruminating aloud, so I said nothing. Then perceiving me again, he took me by the arm. "Well now, Doctor Taft. Let me show you precisely what we are doing down here in the basement," he said, proceeding to guide me around the corridor. ~ S.J. Robinson

I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger. ~ Harriet Tubman

The underground is not a place but a way of life. You can be underground most anywhere, from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Hermosa Beach, California. ~ Bryan Burrough

A leaf that falls into a stream (or a leaf we intentionally drop into a stream) just where the water disappears into the ground ... will come out again at the next opening, because the underground stream has faithfully carried it there, though during this journey it has been beyond the reach of any outside interference. In the same way, an idea that has been introduced into our minds (or that we ourselves have intentionally introduced) will produce its effects after longer or shorter subconscious development. ~ Charles Baudouin

Information paints no picture, sings no song, and writes no poem. ~ R.F. Georgy

Dear Artie: "The young fellow has disappeared into a dead end. I think the long-necked bastard planned to wind up in Paris and sent him there but he may also have used the underground railroad. Ask your round-heeled contact. Maybe you can find more than I could. "Roy ~ John Pearce

I've been known to write on the Underground in London and on the subway in New York. I have two or three cafes in Paris that I go into. I find a corner with a little shade, and I can work. ~ Douglas Kennedy

Their cynicism was complete and terrible: details, like the lying signs outside the underground chambers of the crematoriums that announced in seven languages, "BATHS," whereas in reality they were gas chambers; the boxes of cyclon gas,5 which were labeled, "POISON: FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF PARASITES," the parasites being, of course, the untold thousands of innocent Jews murdered in the space of a few minutes. Who knows just how far the lie went? ~ Miklos Nyiszli

The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land. ~ Henry David Thoreau

So…you're not going to tell me what they mean? C'mon. What's the Hob? Why Forks?"

When I stand, I switch to my blatantly rude, you're-an-idiot tone. This is the one that always pisses off my mom. To be sure he's not missing my insult this time, I also cross my arms and speak very slowly like I'm speaking to a toddler. "The Hob is from The Hunger Games books. It's the underground market where the characters trade food and information. Forks would be the town in Twilight. The setting. In boy-speak, Forks equals the planet Tatooine for Star Wars. You know - Anakin Skywalker's childhood home? Or are you not familiar with any global blockbusters? I suppose I could use Sesame Street or Pokémon for a reference - if it would help you understand better?"

Bam. That should seal it. I couldn't have sounded more like a total bitch.

He nods. "No, I've got it. My bedroom was Tatooine for all of third and fourth grade. Boy-speak…that's funny." He laughs again, and it sounds warm and - and - not at all offended! ~ Anne Eliot

The saxophone does not speak that language. The saxophone speaks the language of the underground, the jaded melancholy of the half-light - grimy and sexy and sweaty and hard. It is the language of orphans and bastards and whores. ~ Eleanor Catton

Roarke "I'll drop you." Eve "No, better I catch a cab or take the underground. This guy sees me show up in a hot car with a fancy piece behind the wheel, he's not going to like me." Roarke "You know how I love being referred. to as your fancy piece." Eve "Sometimes you're my love muffin. ~ Nora Roberts

I love to read about music and about art, but I don't try and take things about mythology or guidelines as to how I'm to behave as an artist. It's the realm of intellectual debate. Actually, more and more my direction is trying to get further away from being self-conscious of what the parameters are of the mainstream, where it intersects with the underground. ~ Emily Haines

I tried to imagine telling my parents the truth. In that regard, the phone conversation is had with my father in the Underground had been a preview of coming attractions. He's lost it. Our son is insane. Or on drugs. Or maybe not in enough drugs. ~ Ransom Riggs

Harriet Tubman fought American slavery single handed and was a pioneer in that organized effort known as the Underground Railroad. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

I'm really interested in how you create a whole new economy of recycling. It's literally the 'underground economy.' All this stuff that on the surface creates growth and profit, ends up with waste, junk, and CO2. So how do you make it economic to bring new players into the ball game? ~ Peter Senge

The issues the underground press raised have not been settled. In colder times they may have frosted over, but as long as individuals and groups seek to take control of their own lives the experiences of those times contain information that can and must be used. ~ Nigel Fountain

The Underground Peasant Movement adopted the slogan of "As little, as late, and as bad as possible," and set about sabotaging deliveries ~ Diane Ackerman

It's barely changed since the faceless colour committee originally selected it in 1908 when the first map of the Underground was designed and the Bakerloo conclusively became brown, a very early twentieth-century brown, which brings something of the nineteenth century with it - the colour of Sherlock Holmes's pipe, a Gladstone bag, a grandfather clock. ~ Paul Morley

Today's milestone is human madness. Politics is a part of it, particularly in its lethal outbursts. Politics is not, as it was for Hannah Arendt, the field where human freedom is unfurled. The modern world, the world of world war, the Third World, the underground world of death that acts upon us, do not have the civilized splendor of the Greek city state. The modern political domain is massively, in totalitarian fashion, social, leveling, exhausting. Hence madness is a space of antisocial, apolitical, and paradoxically free individuation ~ Julia Kristeva

There's a lot of creative music happening in the underground, which is a very hopeful kind of sign....[These initiators are] usually kind of outcasts--for the most part no one can relate to them. And it's all over the planet; you go and look in the alleys and under the doorways, in the coal mines--they're there, lurking in the
shadows; a significant amount of people in different parts of the planet who are genuinely creative. And I associate and attach myself to that. Usually when I go to any new place I try to find out from the musicians--they'll usually say 'this guy can't play,' or 'he's crazy,' 'he's not doing anything,' 'he's a sick, warped, demented
fool'--and immediately I try to find him. He's probably one of us. ~ Anthony Braxton

Child of woe is wane and delicate ... sensitive and on the quiet side, she loves the picnics and outings to the underground caverns ... a solemn child, prim in dress and, on the whole, pretty lost ... secretive and imaginative, poetic, seems underprivileged and given to occasional tantrums ... has six toes on one foot ... ~ Charles Addams

Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies. ~ G.K. Chesterton

All the heroes of black emancipation - from the black abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, to the woman who organized the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, to the leader whose actions finally destroyed American slavery, Abraham Lincoln - were Republicans. It is of the utmost importance to progressive propagandists to conceal or at least ignore this essential historical truth. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

I was young and felt like it was opportunity 'cause they were moving units back then on the underground scene. ~ Young Buck

The underground economy. Our present complex tax code allows - even encourages - people to go "under the radar." How bad is this problem? Well, estimates are that the underground economy - those dealing in illegal or illicit behavior such as drugs or other off-the-books labor - amounts to between $1.5 trillion and $3 trillion per year. ~ Neal Boortz

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

All her life, Alice had been interested in people. She didn't always like them, she rarely sought their company for reasons of social fulfillment, but she did find them fascinating. And there was nowhere better for seeing people than in the rabbit warrens of the Underground. All of London passed through those tunnels, a steady flow of humanity in its many weird and wonderful forms, and among them Alice slipped like a ghost. ~ Kate Morton

But a man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For me, seeing our history told in this light, the ones who did rebel, the ones who did revolt, the revolutionaries, excited me. Seeing this story of the Underground Railroad ... and that is such a proud part of our history that not a lot of us know about, where these brave men and women, they were heroes, really helped tear down the system of slavery just by running. ~ Jurnee Smollett

The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations - and absolutely nothing more. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate millions ... Of all targets New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm. ~ E.B. White

It is in our interests to let the police and their employers go on believing that the Underground is a conspiracy, because it increases their paranoia and their inability to deal with what is really happening. As long as they look for ringleaders and documents they will miss their mark, which is that proportion of every personality which belongs in the Underground. ~ Germaine Greer

My mother was a Chinese trapeze artist in pre-war Paris Smuggling bombs for the underground. And she met my father at a fete in Aix-en-Provence; He was disguised as a Russian cadet in the employ of the Axis. ~ Colin Meloy

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering ... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We have an infinite supply of information and yet we cannot read. ~ R.F. Georgy

Beyond our grim circle, the underground station looked like the aftermath of a nightclub bombing. Steam from burst pipes shrieked forth in ghostly curtains. Splintered monitors swung broken-necked from the ceiling. A sea of shattered glass spread all the way to the tracks, flashing in the hysterical strobe of red emergency lights like an acre-wide disco ball. ~ Ransom Riggs

This is ridiculous, she thought. I'm possessed of terrifying powers. Why am I relying on a ridiculous little gun that I picked because I thought it was cute? I don't need this thing. She threw it contemptuously over her shoulder. Damn right! I took out a house of weird fungal cultists that had devoured three teams of supernatural SWAT teams. I am a badass. She paused and expanded her senses outward, searching for any kind of life. Okay, nothing. At least, she thought uneasily, nothing that I can detect. But then why does it smell so bad down here? There's something foul wandering the underground tunnels beneath my ~ Daniel O'Malley

Rotgut was, to me, just this way to get into the underground of Manhattan where you have these little pockets a villain could rise from; a rot in the bowels of Manhattan. It led to these stories that were just very creepy. ~ Ann Nocenti

Harry had never been to London before. Although Hagrid seemed to know where he was going, he was obviously not used to getting there in an ordinary way. He got stuck in the ticket barrier on the Underground, and complained loudly that the seats were too small and the trains too slow. ~ J.K. Rowling

Of course, I'm a dancer. Dancing grabbed me from the start and I have was never afraid to do it. With out dance I wouldn't be singing. I want to expose people to the underground dance scene through music. ~ Jillian Hervey

Barefoot, exhausted and bloody, Harris Borden turned and left the underground prison that had been his home for the past twelve years and walked out into the Nevada desert. ~ Glen Robinson

If- if I could find a way to free you," I whispered, "would you walk the world above with me?"
My back was to the Goblin King; I could not face him. It was a long time before he answered.
"Oh, Elisabeth," he said. "I would go anywhere with you."
I turned around. His eyes deepened in color and for a moment, just for the merest glimpse, I could see what he would have been like as a mortal man. If he had been allowed to live the course of his life, from the child he had been to the man he would have become. A musician- a violinist. I ran back into the circle of alder trees, wanting the circle of his arms around me. I reached out my hands, and his fingers brushed mine, but we passed through each other like water, like a mirage. We were each nothing but a shimmering illusion, a candle flame we could not hold.
And yet, the Goblin King was still here, in the Goblin Grove, with me. He stood in the Underground while I stood in the world above, but our hearts beat within the same space.
"Don't look back," he said.
I nodded. I love you, I wanted to say. But I knew these words would break me.
"Elisabeth."
The Goblin King was smiling. Not the pointed smile of the Lord of Mischief or Der Erlkönig, but a crooked one. Twisted to one side, lopsided and goofy, it cracked my heart open and I bled inside.
He mouthed a word at me. A name. "You've always had it, Elisabeth," he said softly. "For it is you I gave my soul. ~ S. Jae-Jones

The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized. ~ Russell Simmons

She walked Toby to Victoria Station and left him at the barrier. On her way into the underground she thought he'd followed her, but there was nobody to be seen behind her on the escalator that sailed downwards with a faint inconsolable squeal. She sat on a bench on the empty platform, the breaths of oncoming trains stirring the hairs on the back of her neck. She leafed through Graham's notebook, but couldn't concentrate; she found she had to keep glancing along the platform towards the tunnel. Some fault in the mechanism made the train doors reopen after she boarded, as if someone had leapt on at the last moment. The galloping rush of the wheels made her think of a hunt in the dark. ~ Ramsey Campbell

Over everything - up through the wreckage of the city, in gutters, along the riverbanks, tangled among tiles and tin roofing, climbing on charred tree trunks - was a blanket of fresh, vivid, lush, optimistic green; the verdancy rose even from the foundations of ruined houses. Weeds already hid the ashes, and wild flowers were in bloom among the city's bones. The bomb had not only left the underground organs of the plants intact; it had stimulated them. ~ John Hersey

You gotta look beyond the mainstream ... the mainstream'll drown you, you know? There's always a pulse in the underground that I love. And the pulse in the underground is what keeps heavy metal alive. ~ Phil Anselmo

I want to sell tracks but at the same time I want to stay true to the music I like. This is why I love the underground scene because they can stay true to what they want to do. ~ Rahki

I wished Dean and Carlo were there - then I realized they'd be out of place and unhappy. They were like the man with the dungeon stone and the gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining. The ~ Jack Kerouac

The emergence of the independent hip-hop scene has replaced what we called the "underground scene". It's what the underground scene has evolved into: actual businesses. ~ El-P

When the music industry started collapsing, the logical people understood that the only place to go for shelter was the underground. If the world on the surface is burning up, and you know people that have bunkers, go to the bunkers. ~ Will.i.am

I was always singing but didn't plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn - I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point - and that was it. ~ Lana Del Rey

We rode through a three-thousand-year-old country, saw the ruined capital of the Queen of Sheba and the underground red-rock city of Lalibela, fraternized with a tribe of leaden-skinned troglogytes living among the mountains, scrapped with brigands, outwitted crocodiles, and eventually emerged battered and in rags with a book of adventures and 1,000 feet of film. ~ Rosita Forbes

I mean there's certainly a lot of progressive rock and metal that exists at the underground level, which has its own vitality, as it should. But it seems to have lost its ability to really charge up the hill. ~ Billy Corgan

I was the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. ~ Harriet Tubman

I got caught up on drugs for a few years, I'm off it, I'm very happy, got two kids and a family and everything. And like I said I'm making the underground music, and keeping it real. ~ Vanilla Ice

The world we know is a measure of our own experience. To someone who's worked underground his entire life, the underground will be all he knows of the world. That's why people shouldn't theorize about the meaning of life or suggest one way to live your life because a person's world is defined by his own experience and no one else's. No two person can have the same life; no two people can be the same. Once someone starts saying otherwise, you know he's heading straight to bullshit boulevard. ~ Min-gyu Park

Other humans gaze at the sky, but I say unto you, the only way through the world is to pass through the underground. ~ Rawi Hage

When we talk of flood control, we usually think of dams and deeper river channels, to impound the waters or hurry their run-off. Yet neither is the ultimate solution, simply because floods are caused by the flow of water downhill. If the hills are wooded, that flow is checked. If there is a swamp at the foot of the hills, the swamp sponges up most of the excess water, restores some of it to the underground water supply and feeds the remainder slowly into the streams. Strip the hills, drain the boglands, and you create flood conditions inevitably. Yet that is what we have been doing for years. ~ Hal Borland

Don't rebel against the mainstream only to conform to the underground. ~ Tomas Kalnoky

I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man. An unattractive man. I think that my liver hurts. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

So, yes, I am in the underground, but actually, it feels like home. ~ Anthony Braxton

Of course, I started really being a comics fan with the underground stuff in the '70s. ~ Glenn Danzig

The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition. (Written in 1949, 22 years before the World Trade Center was completed.) ~ E.B. White

Anyway, it's good to be sent back to the underground. There's always a good side to bad things and the good side to this is that at least everyone has to go back down. ~ Joe Strummer

My parents led this double life. They were in the underground movement to bring down the Nazis. My father was hanged for being a traitor. ~ Veruschka Von Lehndorff

I'm now asking an idle question of my own: which is better
cheap happiness, or lofty suffering? Well, which is better? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Stay away from the underground lake I implore,
The Siren will see you are heard of no more. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

How big can you be if just the underground niggas know you? You can't buy your mom a house when you just an underground celebrity. ~ J. Cole

When you break it all down, my punk rock is my dad's blues. It's music from the underground, and it's real, and it's written for the downtrodden in uncertain times. ~ Frank Iero

I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Science is a seagull, it knows the sky; it is a squirrel, it knows the forest; it is a mole, it knows the underground; it is a dolphin, it knows the ocean! Science is a multi-talented creature! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I have defeat tattooed in my DNA. My great-uncle was shot dead. My grandfather was given the death sentence and spent five years in jail. My grandmothers suffered the humiliation of those defeated in the Civil War. My father was put in jail. My mother was politically active in the underground. It bothers me enormously to lose, I can't stand it. And I've spent many years, with some friends, devoting almost all of our political activity to thinking about how we can win. ~ Pablo Iglesias

There's always going to be a fight between mainstream and underground because the mainstream is a very small bubble, and the underground scene is a very small bubble, and they both see themselves as secret societies. ~ Dawn Angelique

Small talk is like the air that shatters the stalactites into dust again. I do not participate. I wait. I laugh. I am aware that shallowness disintegrates the deeper undercurrents everyone seeks. The underground rivers of dreams, of deeper and deeper selves running underneath. I prefer my submarine region. ~ Anais Nin

I like Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Common. But I like the underground stuff like Young Jeezy, Black Rob and Shine. I also love heavy metal like Slipknot and Pantera, It's very intense stuff. ~ Vanilla Ice

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Even then I already carried the underground in my soul. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I could not even imagine any place of secondary importance for myself, and for that very reason I quite contentedly occupied the most insignificant one in real life. Either a hero or dirt - there was no middle way. That turned out to be my undoing, for while wallowing in dirt I consoled myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero overlaid the dirt: an ordinary mortal, as it were, was ashamed to wallow in dirt, but a hero was too exalted a person to be entirely covered in dirt, and hence I could wallow in dirt with an easy conscience. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness. ~ J.K. Rowling

Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived ... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos. ~ Andrew Motion

That name was a sadistic play on the Underground Railroad that smuggled American slaves north. The old Nazis set up their own version and used it mainly to move their people. They called it Die Spinne. ~ John Pearce

What I'm saying is simply that every totalitarian society, no matter how strict, has had its underground. In fact, two undergrounds. There's the underground involved in political resistance and the underground involved in preserving beauty and fun
which is to say, preserving the human spirit. ~ Tom Robbins

I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

No doubt Carter would describe the underground city in excruciating detail, with exact measurements of each room, boring history on every statue and hieroglyph, and background notes on the construction of the magical headquarters of the House of Life.
I will spare you that pain.
It's big. It's full of magic. It's underground.
There. Sorted. ~ Rick Riordan

I surveyed my kingdom. Chaos. Cruelty. Abandon. I had always been holding back. Always been restrained. I wanted to be bigger, brighter, better; I wanted to be capricious, malicious, sly. Until now, I had not known the intoxicating sweetness of attention. In the world above, it had always been Käthe or Josef who captivated people's eyes and
hearts - Käthe with her beauty, Josef with his talent. I was forgotten, overlooked, ignored - the plain, drab, practical,talentless sister. But here in the Underground, I was the sun around which their world spun, the axis around which their maelstrom twirled. Liesl the girl had been dull, drab, and obedient; Elisabeth the woman was a queen. ~ S. Jae-Jones

I'm the diamond in the dirt, that ain't been found. I'm the underground king and I ain't been crowned. ~ Curtis Jackson

Once upon a time there was a girl who discovered that if she played a certain tune on a jade flute, she could summon up jade gnomes, a peculiar, harmless, but rather creepy looking spirit of the underground. The fact is that many of us have talents like this, but generally never discover them due to lack of opportunity, since one can go one's entire life without playing a jade flute, or discovering that one can speak the language of ground sloths, or turning fruitcake into solid tungsten by singing Sinatra tunes to it under a quarter moon. ~ Ursula Vernon

I wonder now about Demeter and Persephone. Maybe Persephone was glad to run off with the king of death to his underground realm, maybe it was the only way she could break away from her mother, maybe Demeter was a bad parent the way Lear was a bad parent, denying nature, including the nature of children to leave their parents. Maybe Persephone thought Hades was the infinitely cool older man who held the knowledge she sought, maybe she loved the darkness, the six months of winter, the sharp taste of pomegranates, the freedom from her mother, maybe she knew that to be truly alive death had to be part of the picture just as winter must. It was as the queen of hell that she became an adult and came into power. Hades's realm is called the underworld, and so are the urban realms of everything outside the law. And as in Hopi creation myths, where humans and other beings emerge from underground, so it's from the underground that culture emerges in this civilization. ~ Rebecca Solnit

He felt dirty, contaminated, as though he were carrying some deadly germ, unworthy to sit on the underground train back from the hospital with innocent, clean people whose minds and bodies were free of the taint of Voldemort. . ~ J.K. Rowling