The Man in My Basement Quotes

“Love, as the poet says, is like the spring. It grows on you and seduces you slowly and gently, but it holds tight like the roots of a tree. You don't know until you're ready to go that you can't move, that you would have to mutilate yourself in order to be free. That's the feeling. It doesn't last, at least it doesn't have to. But it holds on like a steel claw in your chest. Even if the tree dies, the roots cling to you. I've seen men and women give up everything for love that once was.”
― Walter Mosley, The Man in My Basement

“The government isn't real," he replied. He might have been talking about Santa Claus or God. "I don't owe anything to anyone who in themselves are lies and liars.”
― Walter Mosley, The Man in My Basement

“Why was I alive and seeing and thinking and dreaming if everything was just stoplights and televisions, tests and failures, red wine and death?”
― Walter Mosley, The Man in My Basement

“Some people live according to love and being loved—if only a little.”
― Walter Mosley, The Man in My Basement

“Life," he said, "has little to do with progress. More often than not men make the decisions that lead to their own deaths. They delegate, hate, stay when all the signs say go. Mostly they're unwilling to make a deal. And they're almost all forgotten. No better remembered than a cockroach who succumbs to a poison that you set down under the pantry six months before.”
― Walter Mosley, The Man in My Basement