Dollanganger Quotes
Flowers in the Attic
I didn't know at that time that I had come to live in what was virtually a strong and dark
castle, ruled over by a witch and an ogre. I didn't guess that some modern-day wizards could weave money to create a spell...
- Cathy
"Cathy, let's not waste one minute! Let's prepare ourselves for the day we get out. If you
don't set your goals firmly in mind, and strive always to reach them, then you never do."
- Chris
Dancing to beautiful music took me out of myself, and made me forget momentarily that life
was passing us by. What did it matter when I was dancing?
- Cathy
"Does fresh air and sunshine come in capsules? When each of us has swallowed a vitamin capsule
a day, will that give to us the radiant good health we had when we lived normal lives, and spent most of our days outside?"
- Cathy
"I want to be let out. I'm tired of being in a locked room. I want the twins out; I want Chris
out. I want you to rent a house, buy a house, steal a house - but get us out of this house!" -
Cathy
"Cathy, my stomach don't have patience." - Cory
We were another of those unpleasant subjects that people don't like to talk about, like mice
in the attic.
- Cathy
Love. How often that word came up in books. Over and over again. If you had wealth and health,
and beauty and talent...you had nothing if you didn't have love. -
Cathy
Our mother was proven a liar and a cheat, a thief who'd stolen our youth, and killed Cory
in the process of acquiring a fortune she didn't want to share with children she no longer wanted, or loved.
- Cathy
If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. But after all these years
of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing - I wanted a mountain high! A hill wasn't enough. -
Cathy
The Bible said, as Chris quoted one memorable day, there was a time for everything. I figured
my time for happiness was just ahead, waiting for me.
- Cathy
Where was that fragile, golden-fair Dresden doll I used to be? Gone. Gone like porcelain turned
into steel - made into someone who would always get what she wanted, no matter who or what stood in her way.
- Cathy
After we escaped Foxworth Hall, we made our way, and managed, somehow, to always keep
striving toward our goals. Our lives were always to be tempestuous, but it taught both Chris and me that we were survivors.
For Carrie, it was different. She had to be persuaded to want a life without Cory, even when she was surrounded by roses. -
Cathy
We lived in the attic,
Christopher, Cory, Carrie, and me,
Now there are only three.
- Cathy, November 11, 1960
Petals on the Wind
How young we were the day we escaped. How exuberantly alive we should have felt to be freed,
at last, from such a grim, lonely and stifling place. How pitifully delighted we should have been to be riding on a bus that
rumbled slowly southward.
- Cathy
Free. Was ever a word more wonderful than that one?
- Cathy
I wet my pillow with tears shed for a mother I'd loved so much it to hurt think back to the
days when Daddy was alive and our home life was perfect. I cried for all the good things she had done for us back then, and,
most of all, for all the love she'd so generously given us - then. -
Cathy
"Any day you put someone you love underground it's raining!" -
Dr. Paul Sheffield
Dear Mrs. Winslow,
How well I remember the summer of your honeymoon.
It was a wonderful summer, so refreshingly pleasant in the mountains in a locked room with windows that were never opened.
Congratulations and my very best wishes, Mrs.
Winslow, and I do hope all your future summers, winters, springs, and falls will be haunted by the memory of the knid of summers,
winters, springs, and falls your Dresden dolls used to have.
Not yours anymore,
The doctor doll,
The
ballerina doll,
The praying-to-grow-taller doll,
And
the dead doll
"Nobody likes me. They don't like my body 'cause it's too little, and they don't like my head
'cause it's too big, and they don't even like what is pretty 'cause they think it's wasted on somebody too little like me!"
- Carrie Dollanganger Sheffield
"Cathy, come with me to where you belong, behind the footlights, on stage, with roses in your
arms. Come with me, Cathy, and make my dreams come true too." - Julian Marquet
"I'm so afraid life will steal your look of enchantment, your childish wonderment. If you
can hang on to that expression, you'll soon have the world at your feet."
- Madame Zolta
"And you are all wrong for me! The only thing I like about you, Julian Marquet, is the way
you dance!"
- Cathy
"Are you going to break your word? You know we swore to each other to go after our goals and
not let those lost years make a difference."
- Chris, to Cathy
"You have that doctor of yours on a pedestal too; I think you might be the kind to put all
the men you love up so high they are bound to come tumbling down. Just love me and try not to see what doesn't please you."
- Julian, to Cathy
I was still that selfish, ravenous, demanding attic mouse who had to have it proven time and
time again that I was worthy enough to live in the sunlight.
- Cathy
"I love you, Julian, and I'm sorry if I realized it too late, and said it too late - but don't
let it be too late."
- Cathy
"You are like a rose, Cathy. All the bees come to you, and they don't even see me down so
low."
-
Carrie
"As I live and breathe, if it isn't Miss Catherine Dahl, the lovely ballerina who takes my
breath away even before she dances." - Bart Winslow
"And, Cathy, when your own mother doesn't want you - don't that mean nobody can want you?"
- Carrie
"If a man is charming and intelligent enough, I often forget how he actually looks and think
he's handsome regardless." - Cathy
The grandmother had never loved us, so anything she did was to be expected. But our
mother who had borne us, who had cared for us, who had loved us well when Daddy lived - that was another story - an unbearable
horror story!
- Cathy
"Yes, Bart, the woman you married had four children she hid away for three years and almost
five months. Our playground was in the attic."
- Cathy
Chris was eager to depart, but I had to sit and watch until the last wisp of smoke was blown
away and became part of the wind called nevermore. It was my salute, the final one to Bartholomew Winslow, whom I'd first
seen at the age of twelve. On first sight I'd given my heart to him. - Cathy
If There be Thorns
Flickering ghostly in the pale light of the rising moon were the will-o'-the wisp regrets
that told me daily I could and should have done differently. But I am what I have always been, a person ruled by instincts.
It seems I can never change.
- Cathy
"Bart, look at the sunset. Have you ever seen more glorious colors? Colors are like music
to me. I can hear them singing."
- Jory Marquet Sheffield
Jory didn't need new friends anyway. He had his ole ballet classes, with pretty girls all
around and that was enough. With Melodie, more than enough. Me- I didn't have nobody but parents who didn't understand.
- Bart Winslow Sheffield
But whatever it was between my parents, and whatever was going on with Bart, I felt I
had the weight of the world on my shoulders, and they weren't that strong yet. - Jory
And now that I had someone who loved me for myself, no matter how mean or clumsy I was, I
began to feel that special kind of magic that Momma and Jory shared. I thought I, too, could hear the music of sunset colors.
- Bart
"I don't want to take down the mirrors. I want them there to remind me constantly of what
I've done. The closed windows, the stuffy atmosphere are my punishments, not yours."
- Corrine, to Jory
And Bart, he could be dangerous, I knew he could be. Day by day it was beginning to show more
and more. - Jory
I often looked at my mother's third husband and wished he were my own blood father, but at
that moment when he canceled his appointments to save Bart- and Mom- I knew in all the ways that counted that he was my true
father. - Jory
"My son, my beloved son, take me back and say you love me again. And if you cannot do that,
then just let me live where I can see my grandsons now and then." - Corrine, to Chris
