Escape From Furnace Quotes

Don't make the mistake of bringing your heart down here with you, there is no place for it in Furnace.

When you're locked up in here for life, you learn to welcome the little freedoms.

The human mind is a powerful thing in many ways, but in others it's endlessly fragile—it takes only a single moment of pure terror to tear a hole in it, like a finger through a cobweb, leaving you forever just a shadow, a half-person.

You don't have friends in here, you'll soon come to understand that. You get attached to someone, then you'll just lose them. They'll get shanked or they'll jump or they'll be taken one night.

Nobody cares. You shouldn't either.

There always has to be someone to take the punches. That's how it works. It isn't fair, it isn't right, but that kid licking slop off the floor over there means that we get to eat in peace.

Like I've said before, so many times before, I'm not a good person, I'm not a hero. I'm a criminal, a liar, a cheat, a killer. It was them or me and I wanted to live.

Better to be a spirit with the earth beneath you than a corpse pinned tight by the weight of the world.

Let's make like a hockey player and get the puck out of here.

This place is full of unwritten rules.

Trust me-that toilet and me were best friends for the first few days I was here.

Only another twenty thousand or so days of this to go.

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

I'd been so set on an escape that was now impossible, and the only form of freedom left to me was death. It was a terrible kind of freedom—one from misery and pain, yes, but also one from lightness and laughter and life. It was an absence of everything.

Hope. It is the most important thing in the world. I believe that now more than ever. Hope is what saved my life, hope is what gave me the courage and the strength to carry on. Hope – that unshakeable, golden belief that things can get better.

Knackered inmates are easier to control than pumped-up ones. And dead inmates are even easier to control, if you follow me.

Let me know if you're going to do something stupid, kid, 'cause I'll ditch you like that.

When you're scared - and I mean really scared, not just hearing a noise in the night, or standing toe to toe with someone twice your size who wants to pound you into the earth - it feels as if you're being injected with darkness. It's like black water as cold as ice settling in your body where your blood and marrow used to be, pushing every other feeling out as it fills you from your feet to your scalp. It leaves you with nothing.

The world is an inferno. It will burn until every nation has fallen, until all who oppose us are dead, until people see the true light.

One last breath. We all have to take one eventually. It was over.

And if there's nothing left of you but darkness, how can you not become a monster?

That mush plays havoc downstairs, you know?

Don't need a degree in rocket science to do this job.

But nobody can run from their own demons.

When you think about it, we´re all insane, we just don´t know it till we´re given a little push in the wrong direction.

Something in my gut twisted so hard that it felt like I was being tickled by an invisible hand, and it took me a moment to realize what it was. Hope. It had been so long since I'd felt it that the sensation was like something living inside me, something wonderful waiting to break free, just like I was.

It felt like I´d been lying on that bed for a thousand years, tormented by every demon possible.

We are all puppets hanging over an ocean of madness.

We havent´s escaped from our prison, we´ve just moved into a new one. And although there are countless places to hide, there´s nowhere to run.

I wondered how many voices there were living in my head, and how they could all have such different opinions.

All it needed was me, and my fear. Because alone in the silence, in the unfathomable darkness, I knew that my own thoughts would drive me mad. My own mind would kill me.

One does not escape that easily from the seduction of an effete way of life. You cannot arbitrarily say to yourself, I will now continue my life as it was before this thing, Success, happened to me. But once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation. Once you know this is true, that the heart of man, his body and his brain, are forged in a white-hot furnace for the purpose of conflict (the struggle of creation) and that with the conflict removed, man is a sword cutting daisies, that not privation but luxury is the wolf at the door and that the fangs of this wolf are all little vanities and conceits and laxities that Success is heir to - why, then with this knowledge you are at least in a position to know where danger lies.

The two of them holding each other, the tears flowing freely now, as if by never letting go they would never have to say goodbye.

My head, my rules.

All for one and let’s get the hell out of here.

Death is never the end.

And when reality denies you the tools you need for survival you grab them from wherever you can.

My whole body was aching, my stomach felt like it was unpeeling itself, like I was coming apart. I offered silent prayers that I hadn´t eaten dinner.

I pushed until I felt his [Donovan's] body grow still, the tendons in his neck relaxing. I pushed until I felt the mouth beneath the pillow droop, one last dull groan fading into silence. And I kept pushing, because I couldn't bear to pull the pillow away to see what I'd done. "You're free," I said. I closed my eyes, saw Donovan as he had been. One last smile, then he faded.

Just take it from me," Donovan said. "Stay well clear of the warden. Some here think he's the devil. I don't, I don't believe in that religious talk, but I know evil when I see it. He's something rotten they dragged from the bowels of the earth, something they patched together from darkness and filth. He'll be the death of us all, every single one of us here in Furnace. Only question is when." "I know one thing," I added. "The warden certainly brings out peoples dramatic sides." Zee and Donovan both laughed through their noses.

Don't give in, Alex, don't let them win. You beat them once and you can do it again. Don't let this place break you. Keep your mind busy, keep yourself occupied, find things to do. If you're doing things, then you still exist, right?

Thats the best thing about endings: they have to be beginnings, too.

It surged inside me, setting every nerve ending alight, making me feel like I could snap my fingers and stop time, cut the stars from the heavens.

There was only Furnace. It was our world, our grave, our hell.

I could accept my life ending, because there would be no more fear and no more pain. But what if death wasn´t the end? What if some part of me, my soul perhaps, lived on?

Next I was plunged into a void so profound that I thought I´d gone blind.

We are all puppets hanging over an ocean of madness...All it takes is one simple snip and we fall.

Death, it doesnt seem so scarey, you know? Not when you have got the sky over you and the wind on your face.

Oh, nevermind, forget it, said Zee, obviously disgusted to be in such badly read company.

Welcome home, Soldier of Furnace.

I knew that if I let the darkness take me now then I´d never see the light again.

All we had to do was rock this one city to its knees and the cancer of fear would spread. The worl would crumble all by itself.

Keep your mind busy, keep yourself occupied, find things to do. If you're doing things, then you still exist, right?

Hope. It is the most important thing in the world. I believe that now more than ever. Hope is what saved my life, hope is what gave me the courage and the strength to carry on. Hope – that unshakable, golden belief that things can get better.

The Wookiee gambit.' he said with a smile. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but somewhere in my head a distant memory was forming. He raised an eyebrow. 'Christ, Alex, what have they done to your brain? You don't remember Star Wars?

It was terror, I realised, the kind reserved for nightmares, when your mind has no defence against the dark. It was the most primitive, most powerful emotion of all, and I had never, ever felt it like this. This wasn´t just a fear of losing my life, but a fear of losing my soul.

It alters your mind, too. Strips away all the weakness. And most people, when it comes down to it, that´s all that´s there underneath - weakness. When that´s gone, when all all the pathetic emotions are gone, all that´s left is anger, hatred. That´s what those creatures are - they´re what´s left when you take away everything human.

He had always thought that hell would be hot. But here they were, right inside the mouth of it, and it was freezing.

Yeah, because you'll really be showing them, won't you. Talk about cutting up your wrists to spite your fate.

I ain´t rising into anyones kingdom", muttered Simon.

You may rest here, if you are. Each of His flock is welcome.

Are you children of God" he asked. I almost burst out laughing, managing to bite mny tongue before it erupted.

Still no pain as such, just that infuriating itch.

And when reality goes, sanity has no reason.

And like I've said before, sometimes its better to do bad things for the right reasons than good things for the wrong ones. Right?

But I'm starting to understand that you don't have to be perfect to be good. You can do bad things and still be a good person.

He´s been shown a world in which he was more than just a kid, more than just a victim of injustice. He´d been shown a future where he could take his revenge. I´d been there, I knew exactly how that felt.

The tea-infused steam was another smell that brought back a fistful of memories, and I let them come. Better to open the door for them, even if they are sad, than to let them burn your house down from the outside.

When every link to the outside world is severed, time has no meaning. It ceases to exist other than as a dull memory, a vague recollection of what a minute used to be, an hour, a day. Sealed up tight so far beneath the ground, every single second was stretched out almost to infinity—each one a vast and empty abyss where time used to reign, an ageless aeon barren of significance and consequence. When every scrap of light and sound has been taken away, reality has no meaning. It too ceases to exist, for what is reality other than the cumulation of senses—images witnessed by our own eyes and the noises that enter through our ears? But when all those senses are starved, then the real world fades away like the last frantic gasp of a television program when the set is switched off. And when reality goes, sanity has no reason. How can your ability to behave in a normal and rational way still exist when nothing normal or rational remains? As soon as reality breaks, as soon as we are separated from the physical world, the cracks begin to appear in our minds. And through them seeps the madness that has always been there, flowing into your skull like a liquid nightmare.

Rome the crucible, but also the furnace, the boiling metal, the hammer, and the anvil as well, visible proof of the changes and repetitions of history, one place in the world where man will have most passionately lived. The great fire of Troy from which a fugitive had escaped, taking with him his aged father, his young son, and his household goods, had passed down to us that night in this flaming festival. I thought also, with something like awe, of conflagrations to come. These millions of lives past, present, and future, these structures newly arisen from ancient edifices and followed themselves by structures yet to be born, seemed to me to succeed each other in time like waves; by chance it was at my feet that night in this flaming festival.

When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on which I was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of death. I tried to push them away and asked, ‘Who are you? Where is the voice?’ His only answer was a sigh. Suddenly, a hot breath passed over my face and I perceived a white shape, beside the man’s black shape, in the darkness. The black shape lifted me on to the white shape, a glad neighing greeted my astounded ears and I murmured, ‘Cesar!’ The animal quivered. Raoul, I was lying half back on a saddle and I had recognized the white horse out of the PROFETA, which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets. I remembered that, one evening, there was a rumor in the theater that the horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Opera ghost. I believed in the voice, but had never believed in the ghost. Now, however, I began to wonder, with a shiver, whether I was the ghost’s prisoner. I called upon the voice to help me, for I should never have imagined that the voice and the ghost were one. You have heard about the Opera ghost, have you not, Raoul?” “Yes, but tell me what happened when you were on the white horse of the Profeta?” “I made no movement and let myself go. The black shape held me up, and I made no effort to escape. A curious feeling of peacefulness came over me and I thought that I must be under the influence of some cordial. I had the full command of my senses; and my eyes became used to the darkness, which was lit, here and there, by fitful gleams. I calculated that we were in a narrow circular gallery, probably running all round the Opera, which is immense, underground. I had once been down into those cellars, but had stopped at the third floor, though there were two lower still, large enough to hold a town. But the figures of which I caught sight had made me run away. There are demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and, if you come too near them, they frighten you by suddenly opening the red mouths of their furnaces … Well, while Cesar was quietly carrying me on his back, I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small, in front of the red fires of their furnaces: they came into sight, disappeared and came into sight again, as we went on our winding way. At last, they disappeared altogether. The shape was still holding me up and Cesar walked on, unled and sure-footed. I could not tell you, even approximately, how long this ride lasted; I only know that we seemed to turn and turn and often went down a spiral stair into the very heart of the earth. Even then, it may be that my head was turning, but I don’t think so: no, my mind was quite clear. At last, Cesar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his pace a little. I felt a moistness in the air and Cesar stopped. The darkness had lifted. A sort of bluey light surrounded us. We were on the edge of a lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the darkness; but the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf!” - Chapter 12: Apollo’s Lyre

The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing, as a matter of fact. This is obvious in our understanding of time, which, being thingless and insubstantial, appears to us as if it had no reality.2 Indeed, we know what to do with space but do not know what to do about time, except to make it subservient to space. Most of us seem to labor for the sake of things of space. As a result we suffer from a deeply rooted dread of time and stand aghast when compelled to look into its face.3 Time to us is sarcasm, a slick treacherous monster with a jaw like a furnace incinerating every moment of our lives. Shrinking, therefore, from facing time, we escape for shelter to things of space. The intentions we are unable to carry out we deposit in space; possessions become the symbols of our repressions, jubilees of frustrations. But things of space are not fireproof; they only add fuel to the flames.

Probably you consider the body is not at all important. I’ve seen you eat, and you eat as if you were feeding a furnace. You may like the taste of food, but it is all so mechanical, so inattentive, the way you mix food on your plate. When you become aware of all this, your fingers, your eyes, your ears, your body all become sensitive, alive, responsive. This is comparatively easy. But what is more difficult is to free the mind from the mechanical habits of thought, feeling and action into which it has been driven by circumstances – by one’s wife, one’s children, one’s job. The mind itself has lost its elasticity. The more subtle forms of observation escape it. This means seeing yourself actually as you are without wanting to correct yourself or change what you see or escape from it – just to see yourself actually as you are, so that the mind doesn’t fall back into another series of habits. When such a mind looks at a flower or the colour of a dress or a dead leaf falling from a tree, it is now capable of seeing the movement of that leaf as it falls and the colour of that flower vividly. So both outwardly and inwardly the mind becomes highly alive, pliable, alert; there is a sensitivity which makes the mind intelligent. Sensitivity, intelligence and freedom in action are the beauty of living.

And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb—on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost—climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!—for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,—behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations. Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries. You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap from one tower to another; you watch them spring forth, winged, light, and whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from the bell of wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascends and re-ascends the seven bells of Saint-Eustache; you see light and rapid notes running across it, executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like flashes of lightning. Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a shrill, cracked singer; here the gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other end, the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass. The royal chime of the palace scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre-Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the very depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior chanting of the churches, which exhales through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs. Assuredly, this is an opera which it is worth the trouble of listening to. Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from Paris by day is the city speaking; by night, it is the city breathing; in this case, it is the city singing. Lend an ear, then, to this concert of bell towers; spread over all the murmur of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish, as in a half shade, all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime, and say whether you know anything in the world more rich and joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes;—than this furnace of music,—than these ten thousand brazen voices chanting simultaneously in the flutes of stone, three hundred feet high,—than this city which is no longer anything but an orchestra,—than this symphony which produces the noise of a tempest.

Ten minutes after that and the inmates of Furnace were starting to feel invincible, running around the prison looking for the hidden security cameras and shouting insults at the warden. Some were even flashing their backsides at him, or relieving themselves over the black eyes in the rock, and I couldn't help but laugh as I pictured him sitting in his quarters effectively getting pissed on.

(...)mesmo que você tenha ido ao inferno e voltado, ainda conta com os amigos.

Sob o céu fica o inferno, garotos, e, sob o inferno, Furnace.

Não cometam o erro de trazer o coração aqui para baixo; não há lugar para ele em Furnace.

Você é louco, sabia? Com certeza, Alex, você pertence a este lugar; não duvide disso.

Tentei deter as imagens, porque pareciam muito dolorosas — era uma tortura desejar algo que jamais poderia ter.

Sei que foi apenas imaginação, mas poderia jurar que houve algum tipo de impulso elétrico percorrendo nossos dedos unidos. Talvez fizesse muito tempo desde que havia segurado a mão de outra pessoa; muito tempo desde que tinha sentido o contato de alguém. Mas senti uma força a nos unir naquele momento, um vínculo de confiança, amizade e esperança.

Enfraquecida à beira da loucura por tudo que havia acontecido, minha mente tentava agora me convencer de que eu já estava morto; que aquele era meu inferno pessoal.

Mantenha a mente ocupada, encontre coisas para fazer. Se estiver fazendo algo, é porque ainda existe, certo?

É estranho como coisas complicadas podem acontecer quando você está à beira da loucura.

Talvez tentássemos rir o máximo que podíamos antes de encontrar o triste final. Porque nunca se sabe qual riso será o último.

E, se nada mais restasse a não ser escuridão, como poderia não me tornar um monstro?

Mas, mesmo no sonho, não conseguia afastar a sensação de que, apesar das camadas e camadas de músculo que me envolviam e do coração roubado que tinham assentado em meu peito, estava vazio por dentro.

A strange sound escaped Jared’s throat. He pointed to the eye patch covering his empty eye socket. “The one who allowed this, you mean.” Daniel gave him an unflinching stare. “The same.” “That’s not very reassuring, Daniel.” “I told you that you would face your own fiery furnace one day. If you want a taste of reassurance, you have to begin where Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah began.” “And where is that?” “But even if he doesn’t . . .” Jared shook his head, confused. “I don’t know what you mean.” “That morning, when they were dragged before the king, they told him that our God was able to save them from his hand. But they did

What if that was the fate of all of us, turned into the very basest of creatures, the very essence of evil?

Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. (Luke 22:31–32) Our faith is the center of the target God aims at when He tests us, and if any gift escapes untested, it certainly will not be our faith. There is nothing that pierces faith to its very marrow—to find whether or not it is the faith of those who are immortal—like shooting the arrow of the feeling of being deserted into it. And only genuine faith will escape unharmed from the midst of the battle after having been stripped of its armor of earthly enjoyment and after having endured the circumstances coming against it that the powerful hand of God has allowed. Faith must be tested, and the sense of feeling deserted is “the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual” (Dan. 3:19) into which it may be thrown. Blessed is the person who endures such an ordeal! Charles H. Spurgeon Paul said, “I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7), but his head was removed! They cut it off, but they could not touch his faith. This great apostle to the Gentiles rejoiced in three things: he had “fought the good fight,” he had “finished the race,” and he had “kept the faith.” So what was the value of everything else? The apostle Paul had won the race and gained the ultimate prize—he had won not only the admiration of those on earth today but also the admiration of heaven. So why do we not live as if it pays to lose “all things . . . that [we] may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8)? Why are we not as loyal to the truth as Paul was? It is because our math is different—he counted in a different way than we do. What we count as gain, he counted as loss. If we desire to ultimately wear the same crown, we must have his faith and live it.

With every movement the claustrophobia threatened to consume me, and several times I had to stop as the fear rang bells in my brain, making my entire body convulse.

You don't have to be perfect to be good. You can do bad things and still be a good person.

The book I am reading right know is called fugitives it is a scary action packed book that I know for sure that all of my friends would want to read.

But they’re bluffing. I defy even the bravest adult to spend the night in a place like Furnace in the pitch black without thinking that every noise is something right behind you with dagger teeth and eyes of silver and blood on its breath; that every whisper of air that runs over your skin is the rush of a descending blade; that every flicker of movement is a tendril of darkness wrapping itself around your throat and coiling in the pit of your belly, where it feasts on your soul.

Hope. It is the most important thing in the world. I believe that now more than ever. Hope is what saved my life, hope is what gave me the courage and the strength to carry on. Hope—that unshakeable, golden belief that things can get better—is why I'm here talking to you now. Without it, we are nothing.

Indeed, we know what to do with space but do not know what to do about time, except to make it subservient to space. Most of us seem to labor for the sake of things of space. As a result we suffer from a deeply rooted dread of time and stand aghast when compelled to look into its face. Time to us is sarcasm, a slick treacherous monster with a jaw like a furnace incinerating every moment of our lives. Shrinking, therefore, from facing time, we escape for shelter to things of space. The intentions we are unable to carry out we deposit in space; possessions become the symbols of our repressions, jubilees of frustrations. But things of space are not fireproof; they only add fuel to the flames. Is the joy of possession an antidote to the terror of time which grows to be a dread of inevitable death? Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness, they are a threat to our very lives; we are more harassed than supported by the Frankensteins of spatial things.

When you think about it, we're all insane, we just don't know it till we're given a little push in the wrong direction. - from Fugitives (Escape from Furnace #4)

They pulled up to 195 Madison Street - a tall narrow six-story redbrick and limestone-trimmed tenement house indistinguishable from all the tenement houses on all the other streets of tenements. The bars and ladders of a fire escape ran up the left side of the building; sooty stone scrolls, shields, and flowers framed the second- and third-story windows. This was the place where they had to live? Two blocks from the commercial madness of East Broadway; two blocks from the filthy snout of the East River, smelling of fish, ships, and garbage; three blocks from the brain-rattling racket of the elevated train; three blocks from the playground of the Henry Street Settlement; practically in the shadow of the construction side of the twin-towered Manhattan Bridge. Every three blocks they passed more people than the entire population of Rakov. Half a million Jews packed the one and a half square miles of the Lower East Side in 1909; 702 people per acre in the densest acres. It was one of the most crowded places on earth, and all of them seemed to be swarming outdoors on the June afternoon that Gishe Sore and her family arrived. Aside from the crisscross steel girders of the Manhattan Bridge at the end of the street, it was all tenement houses as far as she could see. Tenements and bodies. In every room of every building, bodies fought for a ray of light and a sip of air. Bodies slept four to a bed and on two chairs pushed together; bodies sat hunched over sewing machines in parlors and sunless back bedrooms and at kitchen tables heaped with cloth and thread; bodies ate, slept, woke, and cleared out for the next shift of bodies to cycle through. Toilets in the hall or in courtyard outhouses; windows opening, if they opened at all, onto fetid air shafts; no privacy; no escape from the racket and smell of neighbors; no relief from summer heat or blasting winter furnaces. This was the place her American children had brought them to live?