Catacombs Quotes

“The Christian catacombs represent simplicity and earthiness; the cathedrals, transcendence and wonder.”

“Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.”

“The catacombs where ghostly bodies lie. In the silence you hear the screams go by.”

“                And into the close and mirrored catacombs of sleepWe'll fall, and there in the faded light discover the bones,The dust, the bitter remains of someone who might have been                    Had we not taken his place.”

“…is there anyone so deaf that he cannot hear in Byzantine churches some echo of the Catacombs? What could be more natural than that just as martyrs made paintings for martyrs, latter-day bureaucrats paint for bureaucrats?”

“A poetess is a collection of unfinished thoughts. She is a tormented phantom, a harbinger of life and death. Those who peer deep inside her catacombs will learn that even madness is a virtue.”

“There will be so much more in between. So much uncertainty. I don't know if we'll survive the catacombs, let alone the rest of it. But it doesn't matter. For now, these steps are enough. These first few precious steps into darkness. Into the unknown. Into freedom.”

“Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature.”

“Under the sanctuary are the catacombs where the dead wait for resurrection. The living do not venture there. The caverns here underneath the Sanctuary are illuminated only by dim shafts of light from the sanctuary. The walls are etched with flowers of frost, but at least I am out of the wind. Dark bays line the hall in front of me, a vast rabbit warren, each hold filled to the brim with the scent of the past.”

“The whole underneath of Paris was an ant nest, Metro tunnels, sewer shafts, catacombs, mines, cemeteries. She'd been down in the city of bones where skulls and femurs rose in yellowing walls. Right down there, win the square before them. through a dinky little entrance, were the Roman ruins like honeycomb. The trains went under the river. There were tunnels people had forgotten about. It was a wonder Paris stood up at all. The bit you saw was only half of it. Her skin burned, thinking of it. The Hunchback knew. Up here in the tower of Notre Dame he saw how it was. Now and then, with the bells rattling his bones, he saw it like God saw it -- inside, outside, above and under -- just for a moment. The rest of the time he went back to hurting and waiting like Scully out there crying in the wind.”