Faces in the Water - Pg 204

   I smelled the room, I went shopping among the smells--old urine mixed with misery for it was not the honest stench of babies not yet trained but a preserved and outcast adult smell of those who had known and been deprived of their knowing; the smell of stale polish, straw and straw dust, sunlessness; the smell of corners, of the wooden door that had been kicked and hammered upon for seventy years.