Collecting Quotes

“Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn't been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she's about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it until today...”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Midnight Palace

“Inside the museums, | Infinity goes up on trial | Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while”
― Bob Dylan

“Since you are gone, I collect the stars each night - building my own night sky, so I have something to hold onto forever.”
― Laura Chouette

“Is this not the collector's exquisite pleasure, that his desire should know no bounds, should reach out into the infinite, should never know full possession which disappoints by its very completeness. O what joy to be able to postpone the fulfillment of desire to infinity!”
― Georges Rodenbach, The Bells of Bruges

“A great library is anything and everything. It is not for its current custodians to judge what the future will find to be of importance, and it is this eclecticism that gives it the mystique, that is the wonder of it.”
― Penelope Lively, Ammonites And Leaping Fish: A Life In Time

“Often, the story of an artifact’s journey is more remarkable than the object itself.”
― Mackenzie Finklea, Beyond the Halls: An Insider's Guide to Loving Museums

“Some people collect out of a desire for an aesthetic, others for prestige, and still others for a sense of mastery. But most theories of collecting elaborate on attempts to define, protect, or enhance the self.”
― Randy O. Frost, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

“Dreams are the museum for artists.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Oneironaut’s Diary

“Stay here and do the packing and let the young one run all over California for you! Don't you always say the success of collecting is in the packing? You're the boss--take the most important role and stop moaning!”
― Tracy Chevalier, At the Edge of the Orchard

“This is true of all collecting. It extinguishes the moral instinct. The object finally possesses the possessor.”
― John Fowles

“I have owned, I confess, thousands of objects. Even if today most of them are nothing more than memories, I continue to seek, to find, to acquire. Acquisition, being, for some mysterious reason, the most important act, like a gambler throwing dice. The idea of speculation has never crossed my mind, nor of" decoration. "Collecting is for me both essential and completely useless.”
― Pierre Le-Tan, A Few Collectors

“When he was very young, Auberon had begun a collection of postmarks. On a trip with Doc to the post office in Meadowbrook, he had begun idly examining the wastebaskets, having nothing else to do, and had immediately come up with two treasures: envelopes from places that seemed fantastically distant to him, and looking remarkably crisp for having come so far.

It soon developed into a small passion, like Lily's for bird's nests. He insisted on accompanying whoever was traveling near a post office; he conned his friends' mail; he gloated over distant cities, far states whose names began with I, and, rarest of all, names from across the sea.

Then one day Joy Flowers, whose granddaughter had lived abroad for a year, gave him a fat brown bag full of envelopes sent her from every part of the world. He could hardly find on the map a place which had not stamped its name on one of these pieces of blue flimsy. Some of them came from places so distant they weren't even in the alphabet he knew. And at a stroke his collection was complete, and his pleasure in it over. No discovery he could make in Meadowbrook's post office could add to it. He never looked at it again.”
― John Crowley, Little, Big

“Everything is physics including stamp collecting!”
― Khalid Masood

“When you 'own' a work of art it immediately loses its value”
― Dean Cavanagh

“This process taught us to test and challenge the prevailing wisdom about the paucity of African American artifacts. What we discovered was a paucity of effort and creativity rather than a scarcity of collections. I hope that our efforts will spur other institutions to embrace community-driven collecting and commit the resources to look inside the basements and garages for material that was once deemed less important to the interpretive agenda of museums. Not every cultural organization will discover items from Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, or Marian Anderson, but every museum that makes the effort will find discover items from Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, or Marian Anderson, but every museum, but every museum that makes the effort will find objects that document the lives, the work, the resiliency, and the dreams of their community.”
― Lonnie G. Bunch III, A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump

“The purpose of books is not to be read. I buy books not to read them. I own a lot of books. I write books, I collect books, I think about books, I copy books, I pay for books – I’m in the book business. But I don’t read books.”
― Aaron Levy, Four Conversations on the Architecture of Discourse

“like someone who obsessively collects paintings of hoarders”
― J.S. Mason, The Satyrist...And Other Scintillating Treats

“She collects these boys and men. Their souls. She knows they will think about her, love her again in their minds. Blood courses from the head back to the heart. Then it is done. They are hers forever.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“I've got an apartment that consists of nothing but books; on the other hand, I don't collect. It's a mania to buy books. I can't go out without buying a book. But it would never occur to me to collect. I collect authors because obviously I want all their work, but this business of first editions and that whole thing doesn't strike me.”
― Edward Gorey, Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

“This has led some scholars to suggest that collecting is a way of managing fears about death by creating a form of immortality. This is consistent with a popular theory in social psychology called the terror management theory (TMT). TMT grows out of an existential predicament--that people, like animals, are mortal. But unlike animals, we are aware of our own mortality. Knowledge of the inevitability of death and its unpredictability can produce paralyzing fear. To cope with this potential terror, cultures provide beliefs, rituals, and sanctioned strategies for managing it. One of these strategies is the belief that some part of ourselves can live on after we die. Producing or amassing something of value is one way to accomplish this. Thus a collection offers the potential for immortality.”
― Randy O. Frost, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

“Since then...I have continued to practice the only sport that suits me. Almost everything attracts me, from archaeology to Islam to Asia and drawings from all eras... The books have never stopped accumulating, but I don't think of them as a collection. For me, they're simply a reservoir of indispensable knowledge that a computer could never replace.”
― Pierre Le-Tan, A Few Collectors

“The books have never stopped accumulating, but I don't think of them as a collection. For me, they're simply a reservoir of indispensable knowledge that a computer could never replace.”
― Pierre Le-Tan, A Few Collectors

“Don't laugh, the love of books is a charming eccentricity: it is respectable, it is innocent, it proves you have an honest soul, a contented mind. To love books is to renounce games, good eating, useless luxury, horse-racing, political ambition, the pains of love. In his library the bibliophile is King.”
― Jules Janin

“She knew a lot about nature, and although she wasn't one for volunteering information or lecturing her daughter, she could always be counted on to notice and share small instances of beauty. The curled side of a gray-green gum leaf, a delicate discarded nest, the way an Illawarra flame tree in flower was a firework against a deep blue sky. They never managed a trip down to the beach without amassing a collection of seaweed and shells and elegant pieces of driftwood that would then be carted home and displayed on windowsills or turned, by Polly, into a striking mobile, or even, on one occasion, a spidery dreamcatcher for Jess.”
― Kate Morton, Homecoming

“The problem with collecting other people's junk is you just don't know what to do with it when you don't want it anymore. You feel bad about throwing it to the curb. It's too much trouble to sell. So you keep it around, knowing if you can't redeem it, exactly, you've at least rescued it. Somewhat.”
― Lisa Samson, A Thing of Beauty

“In the realm of history, few things capture the imagination as much as ancient artifacts. Among these treasures of the past, rare Roman coins stand out as exquisite objects that not only hold immense historical significance but also carry a unique appeal for collectors and enthusiasts alike. In this article, we embark on a journey to explore the fascinating world of rare Roman coins, their historical context, and the joy of discovering these precious relics of antiquity.”
― Stefan Chardakiliev

“11am I plan to sort out my books and record collection, which I've been trying to do since about 1959 and, of course, I never really do because then the newspapers arrive and my determination to do something constructive is wiped out by the fact it takes so long to read them. ['My Saturday', Sunday Telegraph, December 2023]”
― Tim Rice

“Doesn't the female always take what she wants and at the same time try to hang on to what she already has?”
― Ann Petry, The Narrows