The Fall of the House of Usher (TV Mini Series)

The Pit and the Pendulum (2023)

Carla Gugino: Verna

Photos 

Quotes 

• Verna : What's a poem, after all, if not a safe space for a difficult truth. Here's one. Came to me when you adorable little things started building cities. I call it "The City in the Sea". Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone. Far down within the dim West. Where the good and the bad. And the worst and the best. Have gone to their eternal rest. No rays from the holy Heaven come down. On the long nighttime of that town. But light from out the lurid sea Streams up the turrets silently. Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls, Up fanes, up Babylon-like walls. Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers. Of sculptured ivory and stone flowers. Resignedly beneath the sky. The melancholy waters lie. Ah. But lo, a stir is in the air! The wave, there is a movement there! The waves have now a redder glow. The hours are breathing, faint and low. And when, amid no earthly moans. Down, down that town shall settle hence. Hell rising from a thousand thrones. Shall do it reverence.

• Madeline Usher : Everything has a price. Every negotiation's a point of entry. Every deal is simply an expression of will. Mutual will. We can sort this. Woman to woman.

  Verna : I'm not a woman.

  Madeline Usher : You know what I am capable of. You know what I have done. You know who I am.

  Verna : You're a collection of impeccable, elaborate masks in orbit of a stunted heart.

  [Madeline tries to break her neck] 

  Verna : That was cruel. I apologize.

• Verna : Your brother, you know what he would have been? A poet. That's where his talent was. A broke poet, sure. But frankly, is there another kind?