Jennifer Toth > Quotes

“He lives by what he calls the Homeless Credo: “Do what you have to do today. Tomorrow will come. And if it doesn’t, you won’t have to deal with it.”
― Jennifer Toth, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City

“The notion that the underground homeless people are “irretrievable” is refuted by their hope and caring for one another, which reaches far beyond the harsh environment in which they live. I know many people who attest to it. Theirs is a strange and foreign world, but it is very near and largely of our making.”
― Jennifer Toth, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City

“The doctor asked him to return when the swelling disappeared. Seville means to go back, he says, but he just doesn’t have the time to spend commuting and hanging out in the waiting room. “I got to spend all day getting food and ready for the night, and then I got to spend all night staying warm.”
― Jennifer Toth, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City

“Never Judge Another Person's Journey!”
― Jennifer Toth, Kaleidoscope of Being

“The tunnels comfort me, I guess, because they’te mine. They know what’s inside me and they feel the way I do. Always. Like, you know, when you bomb a test but it’s sunny outside? Well, that doesn’t happen in the tunnels,” she laughs. “They’re always dark inside, like me, but inside, I’m like the tunnel—dark, winding, and twisting.”
― Jennifer Toth, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City

“The most dangerous animal on earth is man,”
― Jennifer Toth, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City

“In such a life, he thinks, there is a truth. You can be so cold that you can’t get colder, so wet you can’t become wetter. You can feel so deeply that you are saturated, numb but still intensely alert—beyond fear—as if living a memory. Beyond living, he thinks. Surviving.”
― Jennifer Toth, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City