Collector Quotes

Her wavy hair falls to mid-waist, and I think how she looks better this way. From the back. ~ Victoria Scott

I screeched with frustration, which in hindsight is never okay when there are people trying to kill you. ~ Jessica Fortunato

Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility. ~ Mary McCarthy

For inside him there are spirits, or at least little genii, which have seen to it that for a collector - and I mean a real collector, a collector as he ought to be - ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them. ~ Walter Benjamin

I used to be a huge collector, and my big thing was stickers. ~ Jenny Lewis

Luckily for me, my father had impeccable taste. No contemporary collector was he. His treasure trove of comics included gems such as 'Little Lulu,' 'Frontline Combat' and 'Classics Illustrated.' But the works that stood head and shoulders above the rest were Carl Barks's 'Donald Duck' and 'Uncle Scrooge' comics from the 1940s through the 1960s. ~ Jeff Kinney

I am not a collector of deserts! ~ Benito Mussolini

I'm a winemaker and a wine collector, so I usually just drink wine. ~ Isiah Whitlock, Jr.

Being in love is like being lit on fire and having your loved one morph into a marshmallow as she runs to embrace you. But not being in love feels so much worse, possibly like being a tax collector. Actually, nothing compares to the lowliness of a tax collector. ~ Jarod Kintz

The difference between a person who appreciates books, even loves them, and a collector is not only degrees of affection, I realized. For the former, the bookshelf is a kind of memoir; there are my childhood books, my college books, my favorite novels, my inexplicable choices. Many matchmaking and social networking websites offer a place for members to list what they're reading for just this reason: books can reveal a lot about a person. This is particularly true of the collector, for whom the bookshelf is a reflection not just of what he has read but profoundly of who he is: 'Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they can come alive in him; it is he who comes alive in them,' wrote cultural critic Walter Benjamin. ~ Allison Hoover Bartlett

Having access to the library was all well and good, but as a collector you had to own the book. ~ John Baxter

I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood
it is certainly not an elegiac mood but, rather, one of anticipation
which these books arouse in a genuine collector. ~ Walter Benjamin

As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend. ~ Walter Benjamin

I'm not a collector. I don't keep letters, or books, or souvenirs. But I do keep one copy of each translation of my books into a foreign language. Have you ever seen a murder story printed in Singhalese? Wow! ~ Rex Stout

I'm fascinated by the narrative of geology, and I'm a veritable pack rat of a collector on the road. I keep a rock hammer in my car. ~ Marianne Wiggins

I wrote a number of pieces in the year 1966 that were so bad that, although I'm a great collector of my own pieces, I have never collected them. ~ Tom Wolfe

Huguette Clark was an artist, a painter and doll collector. ~ Bill Dedman

Bryce looked like a California underwear model. Not that I'd thought about him in his underwear.
Much.
He was talking with his friend Nathan. Where Bryce had the whole tan, blond, hazel-eyed thing going on, Nathan was fair with dark hair and dark eyes. They looked like opposite sides of the same coin. A really hot, totally unreachable coin that a collector would keep in a special locked case, which normal girls like myself were not allowed to touch. ~ Chris Cannon

Every snapshot collector has obsessions. Some only collect photos of cars. Others like World War II, or babies, or old-timey girls in old-timey swimsuits. I happen to collect the weird stuff: photos that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up a little. The uncanny. ~ Ransom Riggs

He undid the lock and pulled open the cover to reveal a large stack of envelopes, each one labeled with a different name: Franklin Hobart, Brian Yancey, Everett Singer, Larry Steczynski…it was this last one he grabbed and pulled open, emptying its contents into his wallet and pockets.
"Larry Steczynski?" I asked incredulously.
Sage smiled. "You don't think it suits me?"
"Oh, I think you suits you perfectly. How many aliases do you have?"
"I'm a bit of a collector."
I placed a hand on his wrist, stopping him as he transferred something into his wallet. "Does Larry Steczynski carry a black AmEx?"
"He might."
"My mom doesn't even carry a black AmEx."
"Apparently your mom doesn't move in the same circles as Larry Steczynski."
"Sage," Ben called from across the room. He had knelt down to gaze closely at a sculpted figurine that sat on an end table, and his voice broke with awe. "This...this is a real Michelangelo, isn't it?"
"Yeah, yeah it is."
"But it's a Michelangelo!"
"Yep."
"And that painting," Ben said, nodding to a piece on the wall featuring a sketch of what looked like a somewhat cherubic version of Sage himself. "That's a real Rubens?"
"It is."
"It looks like you."
"Strong genetics in the family line," Sage explained. ~ Hilary Duff

Here's some free advice; like the folkies of yore, you need to be not just a writer of songs, you need to be a lover of songs, a listener of songs and a collector of songs. If you hear a song in a club that knocks you out or you hear an old recording of a great song you never knew existed, it does not diminish you to record it; it actually exalts you because you have brought a great song from obscurity to the ear of the public. ~ Michael Kosser

Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector ... and miss. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I'm a compulsive sneaker collector, mostly limited edition. ~ Jourdan Dunn

I am a collector of hopes and peregrine truths, a shepherd of thoughts, ideas, projects and dreams too important not to be realized. I'm an abstract concept that has no body, no smell, no boundaries, no shape and no color. I am the omnilogos. ~ Michele Amitrani

Perhaps he even needs to have been a critic and a sceptic and a dogmatist and an historian, and in addition a poet and collector and traveller and puzzle-solver and moralist and seer and 'free spirit' and nearly all things, so that he can traverse the range of human values and value-feelings and be able to look with many kinds of eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths into every height, from the corners into every wide expanse. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Nobody can give you advice after you've been collecting for a while. If you don't enjoy making your own decisions, you're never going to be much of a collector anyway. ~ Charles Saatchi

Who hasn't thought about killing themselves, as a kid? How can you grow up in this world and not think about it? It's an option taken by a lot of successful people: Ernest Hemingway, Socrates, Jesus. Even before high school, I thought that it would be a cool thing to do if I ever got really famous. If I kept making my maps, for instance, and some art collector came across them and decided to make them worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, if I killed myself at the height of that, they'd be worth millions of dollars, and I wouldn't be responsible for them anymore. I'd have left behind something that spoke for itself. ~ Ned Vizzini

The Rakshasa," said Percy pedantically, "are a different breed altogether from our vampires. Much in the same way that poodles and dachshunds are different breeds of dog. Rakshasas are reviled in India. Their position as tax collectors is an attempts by the crown to integrate them in a more progressive and mundane manner."
Rue said, "Oh, how logical. Because we all know ordaining someone as a tax collector is the surest way to get them accepted by society. ~ Gail Carriger

One should not be obstinate even in worldly interaction. If you are obstinate with a 'collector', what will he do? He will throw you in jail. So then what will happen if you are obstinate with God? God won't put you in jail, but his happiness upon you will break (will go away). ~ Dada Bhagwan

In the history of show business, there probably never was a straighter straight man than banana-yellow Bert, the paper clip collector and pigeon fancier. ~ Michael Davis

Her name is Emmilina. She is quite eccentric and was Thomas's best friend. ~ Jessica Fortunato

To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves. ~ Walter Benjamin

Orna Davidzon : the avant-garde queen of private art collection ... ~ Imran Shaikh

Destinies, are like roads.
Relationships are much like destinies. Therefore, relationships are like roads.
Some roads are circular. They start at one spot and end in the same. Some roads fork and force. Their travelers to choose which way to go. Some roads go great distances. And then there are those that
end abruptly.
Who is to say that a short road is less meaningful than a long? ~ Heather Lyons

A mere collector of supposed facts is as useful as a collector of matchboxes. ~ Lucien Febvre

named for a man who became a saint but worked as a tax collector. ~ Matthew Minicucci

Who am I? Who am I?"
"You're Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You're the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You're the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. You're a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. You're a swimmer. You're a baker. You're a cook. You're a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You're an excellent pianist. You're an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I'm away. You're patient. You're generous. You're the best listener I know. You're the smartest person I know, in every way. You're the bravest person I know, in every way. You're a lawyer. You're the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. You're a mathematician. You're a logician. You've tried to teach me, again and again. You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you."

"And who are you?"
"I'm Willem Ragnarsson. And I will never let you go. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

I've never been a collector - just a consumer - and these days unless a book is signed to me by another author, I don't normally have any qualms about passing it to a friend or donating it to the library. ~ Rick Riordan

Michael Bloomfield was the antithesis of a collector ... he didn't care how old a guitar was; all he wanted was something that sounded good when played it ... and he cared nothing about the collectibility of an instrument ... his philosophy was "A good player can make any guitar sound good" ... to Michael, a guitar was just a tool ... ~ Nick Gravenites

The collector attempts always to acquire the best, and his knowledge of what is best is always widening. His is the task of judging between degrees of perfection. ~ Arthur Davison Ficke

This impressed me when I was the editor of the Sunday Times [of London] - we had the "Bloody Sunday" killings of 13 unarmed civilians by British paratroopers. We interviewed 500 people for our report, and not one of them could give us a total picture of what was happening. It was like the Rashomon effect multiplied a million times. For a website or even a newspaper to be a collector of information flow is not the highest form of journalism. ~ Harold Evans

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nobody has proved to my friends that the Nazis were wrong about the Jews. Nobody can. The truth or falsity of what the Nazis said, and of what my extremist friends believed, was immaterial, marvelously so. There simply was no way to reach it, no way, at least, that employed the procedures of logic and evidence. The bill-collector told me that Jews were filthy, that the home of a Jewish woman in his boyhood town was a pigsty; and the baker told me that the Jews' fanaticism about cleanliness was a standing affront to the "Germans," who were clean enough. What difference did the truth, if there were truth, make? I ~ Milton Sanford Mayer

I think that the genes for being an artist and mentally ill aren't just related, they are the same gene, but try telling that to a bill collector. We ~ Neil Hilborn

What I do quite honestly and seriously and not in any way being humble is not as important as what the garbage collector does. People make actors important. ~ James Caan

My mother did an incredible job - one, of just being a great mom, but two, of instilling a tremendous amount of empathy into me as a young man, as a young person. My mom was kind of this collector of people; throughout my childhood, it didn't matter who you were. She was a high school counselor and then a junior high counselor, and she didn't just counsel students, she counseled other teachers and administrators and coaches. ~ Morgan Spurlock

I'm a millionaire, I guess, but I'm just a normal person and I like everybody, taxi drivers, whoever you are, to call me by my first name and talk to me on a man-to-man basis. I think the garbage collector is as important as the goddamned president. ~ Ted Turner

I don't know a single collector or museum director who says: 'Oh, he's on a list, so I think I'll buy something of his.' The people who buy my art put a little more thought into it than that. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I am obsessed with books.
I am a book collector. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Have you thought about His (God) handling of the gospel? God needs to get a message out to the human race, without which they will perish ... foreve r. What's the plan? First, He starts with the most unlikely group ever: a couple of prostitutes, a few fishermen with no better than a second-grade education, a tax collector. Then, he passes the ball to us. Unbelievable. ~ John Eldredge

Thus there is in the life of a collector a dialectical tensions between the poles of disorder and order. ~ Walter Benjamin

Well, yes, there were quite a lot of books throughout, tumbling out of haphazardly placed bookshelves, stacked beneath chairs, beside beds, even in the bottoms of a closet or two. But I was never a "collector." My love of books is a love of what they contain; they hold knowledge as a pitcher holds water, as a dress contains the mystery of a woman's exquisite body. Their physicality matters
do not speak to me of storing books as bytes!
but they should not inspire fetishistic devotion. ~ Julia Glass

And why can't I have an ignore button like my phone? As I hit it, his calls disappear from the screen and the ringing stops. But the tingles are still at my fingertips, as if he sent them through the phone to grab me. Shoving it in my purse-the pockets on skinny jeans must just be for show 'cause nothing else is fitting in there-I smile at Mark.
Ah, Mark. The blue-eyed, blond-haired, all-American quarterback. Who knew he had a crush on me all these years? Not Emma McIntosh, that's for dang sure. And not Chloe. Which is weird, because Chloe was a collector of this kind of information. Maybe it's not true. Maybe Mark's only interested in me because Galen was-who wouldn't want to date the girl who dated the hottest guy in school? But that's just fine with me. Mark is...well, Mark isn't as fantabulous as I always imagined he would be.
Still, he's good-looking, a star quarterback, and he's not trying to hook me up with his brother. So why am I not excited?
The question must be all over my face because Mark's got his eyebrow raised. Not in a judgmental arch, more like an arch of expectation. If he's waiting for an explanation, his puny human lungs can't hold their breath long enough for an answer.
Aside from not being his business, I can't exactly explain the details of my relationship with Galen-fake or otherwise. The truth is, I don't know where we can go from here. He ripped holes in my pride like buckshot. And did I mention he broke my heart?
He's not ~ Anna Banks

I'm a big collector of things."
"Am I a thing?"
"No, you're my heart. ~ Jen Frederick

You panic button collector. You clock of beautiful ticks. You run out the door if you need to. You flock to the front row of your own class. You feather everything until you know you can always, always shake like a leaf on my family tree and know you belong here. You belong here and everything you feel is okay. Everything you feel is okay. ~ Andrea Gibson

I know that collector types can be a pain in the neck and seem perpetually frozen in time - or at least in their parents' basement - but someone has to look out for the past, lest it slip away forever. ~ Henry Rollins

Not everyone, the Collector was aware, is improved by the job he does in life; some people are visibly disimproved. ~ J.G. Farrell

A book collector is mad enough to begin with, Watson; but tempt him with some such bait as this Shakespeare quarto and he is bereft of all sanity. ~ Vincent Starrett

The Doll Collector - A Beck McManus Novel - By Edward Jakubik ~ Edward Jakubik

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 [...], 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. ~ Jose Saramago

The tax collector must love poor people, he's creating so many of them. ~ Bill Vaughan

Nothing compares to pizza, and you discover and rediscover it when you are much too old, and you have got too much cholesterol and triglycerides ... A collector is someone who is ready to devour the work of art that he wants to possess at all costs. ~ Augusto De Luca

I am a collector of many things, but I particularly love the sterling silver mint julep cups, each engraved with the titles of the Broadway shows in which I appeared. ~ Bryan Batt

My archive project is a multiedged sword. It is something I love doing, but it raises some questions about my motives in doing it. A writer accused me of building my archives just to further my own legend, whatever that is. I hope you don't believe that. What a shallow existence that would be! I remember reading that article saying that about me. It pissed me off. It's my life, and I am a collector. I collect everything: cars, trains, manuscripts, photographs, tape recordings, records, memories and clothes, to name a few. The fact that I want to create a chronological history of my recordings and supporting work is proof positive that I am an incurable collector, confronted with an amazingly detailed array of creations that I have painstakingly rat-holed over the years. ~ Neil Young

I'm a collector. I was born a collector. I came out of the womb a collector. I can trace it back to childhood - collecting used keys. ~ Micah Lexier

Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism
victimless collecting, as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments. ~ Susan Sontag

If you're a devoted collector of design, you seek out objects you can love to live with but also live in. ~ Dasha Zhukova

I've decided that art is a habit-forming drug. That's all it is, for the artist, for the collector, for anybody connected with it. ~ Marcel Duchamp

It's finished. There isn't a stamp, or an error that I haven't collected. Not one. What shall I do now?"
"I think I'm beginning to understand," said Moomintroll slowly. "You aren't a collector anymore, you're only an owner, and that isn't nearly so much fun. ~ Tove Jansson

There are two types of collector, I think. There are those who are quite academic, and get into the archaeology of finding the earliest example of a particular idea. Then there are those interested in what's new. ~ Adam Clayton

Lavater told Goethe that on a certain occasion when he held the velvet bag in the church as collector of the offerings, he tried to observe only the hands; and he satisfied himself that in every individual the shape of the hand and of the fingers, the action and sentiment in dropping the gift into the bag, were distinctly different and individually characteristic. ~ Anna Brownell Jameson

What distinguishes the historian from the collector of historical facts is generalization. ~ Edward Hallett Carr

I've been a book collector since I was young, since I was a kid. ~ Brett Ratner

Fighting corruption is not restricted to naming and shaming a few corrupt officials. If we think it is okay to cheat in exams, lie to a ticket collector in the train about our kids' ages and pay a bit of money to avoid a big traffic fine, then at some level we clearly don't care about eliminating corruption all that much. At best, we hate the politician who gets to steal (while we don't!). ~ Chetan Bhagat

When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire.
"Well?" said he.
"Do you not find it interesting?"
"To a collector of fairy-tales. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Whenever I got any money, I invested it in books. When my savings dwindled, I got rid of everything else - pictures, furniture, china. I think you understand what it is to be a passionate collector of books ... ~ Arturo Perez Reverte

Someone ought to invent a tool, a kind of plane to shave the lies away from stories and deception away from memories. I'm a collector of shavings. ~ Sasa Stanisic

The scarcity of the music not only makes the music itself enjoyable but it also gives the collector a strange sense of superiority. ~ Henry Rollins

(Sebastian, for all his moodiness, at times devised some piece of ghoulish fun, as when in a crowded tramcar he had the ticket-collector transmit to a girl in the far end of the car a scribbled message which really ran thus: I am only a poor ticket-collector, but I love you); ~ Vladimir Nabokov

A folklore study differs from most writing, in that the tale is told in the voice of the individual telling the story, not by the collector. ~ Karen Jones Gowen

I'm not a guitar collector. I own some guitars because I play. ~ Robin Zander

The passion of the collector when confronted with a rare item, the enthusiasm of a hunter who sees a fine, handsome beast, can give us no idea of the tremendous love of clothes in some women. ~ Benito Perez Galdos

Whenever you try to do good with someone else's money, you are committed to using force. How can you do good with somebody else's money, unless you first take it away from them? The only way you can take it away from them is the threat of force: you have a policeman, tax collector, who comes and takes it from them. ~ Milton Friedman

I'm a big toy collector. I've been slowing down because my money's been tight, but I collect toys, too. ~ Jason Mewes

A library represents the mind of its collector, his fancies and foibles, his strength and weakness, his prejudices and preferences. Particularly is this the case if, to the character of a collector, he adds - or tries to add - the qualities of a student who wishes to know the books and the lives of the men who wrote them. The friendships of his life, the phases of his growth, the vagaries of his mind, all are represented. ~ William Osler

I'm also interested in creating a lasting legacy for collectors because bronze will last for thousands of years so I'm not really selling the art to this particular collector but it is being passed on. ~ Richard MacDonald

Every collector is potentially (if not actually) a thief. ~ Susan Sontag

Becoming a book collector is like joining a religion: it's for life. ~ Arturo Perez Reverte

As in most obituaries, the author said little about the man; they rarely do. But the reticence here was greater than usual. It mentioned that Ravenscliff left a wife, but did not say when they married. It said nothing at all about his life, nor where he lived. There were not even any of the usual phrases to give a slight hint: 'a natural raconteur' (loved the sound of his own voice); 'Noted for his generosity to friends' (profligate); 'a formidable enemy . . .' (a brute); 'a severe but fair employer . . .' (a slave-driver); 'devoted to the turf' (never read a book in his life); 'a life-long bachelor' (vice); 'a collector of flowers' (this meant a great womaniser. Why it came to mean such a thing I do not know.) More browsing ~ Iain Pears

In getting from Windsor to Detroit there is a choice between a free tunnel and a toll bridge, which turned out to be a short ride for a dollar, which I mentioned to the toll-collector who said, 'One of those things,' impelling me to remark to my cousin, 'Almost everything said by people one sees for only an instant is something like poetry. Precise, incisive, and just right, and the reason seems to be that there isn't time to talk prose. This suggests several things, the most important of which is probably that a writer ought not to permit himself to feel that he has all the time in the world in which to write his story or play or novel. He ought to set himself a time-limit, and the shorter the better. And he ought to do a lot of other things while he is working within this time-limit, so that he will always be under pressure, in a hurry, and therefore have neither the inclination nor the time to be fussy, which is the worst thing that happens to a book while it's being written. ~ William, Saroyan

I am a sort of collector of religions: and the curious thing is that I find I can believe in them all. ~ George Bernard Shaw

He dumped its contents out on the tablecloth: a gold ring, a gold nugget, and a gold signet seal. Francisco pointed to each. I told you that this was the secret of happiness. The three objects belonged to a rich collector. When he was asleep they argued all the time. The gold ring declared it was better than the other two because miners had risked their lives to find it. The gold signet said it was better than the other two because it had sealed the messages of a king. They argued day and night, until the ring said. 'Lets ask God', He will decide which of us is the best. The other two agreed, and so they approached the Almighty. Each made its claim for being superior. God listened carefully, and when they were done, he said, ' I cant settle your dispute, I'm sorry. The gold signet seal grew angry 'What do you mean, you cant settle it? You're God.' That's the problem said God. I don't see a ring, a nugget and a seal. All I see is gold. ~ Deepak Chopra

Books are essential to me. I cannot live without them, because I cannot live without reading.

But, Arry has just said to me, you can always borrow them so why buy them?

I don't buy books just to collect them. I'm not a collector. I'm not interested in them as objects that might be valuable one day, regardless of what they are about, nor do I want to own every book ever written by one particular author or on one particular subject. I buy them because I want to read them, and I keep them because I've read them.

I can't afford to buy all the ones I'd like to, so I have to borrow quite a few, and this has taught me something about myself, which I haven't heard anyone else admit. When I've read a book which I really like, a book which MATTERS, I feel it belongs to me. I mean, the book itself, the copy I've read. It's as if I pour myself onto the pages as I read them, all my thoughts and emotions, so that by the time I've finished that copy holds inside it the essence of my reading.

A borrowed book has to be returned, so I lose this essence of myself when I give it back. Besides which, a borrowed book has inside it something of everyone else who's read it. They've fingered it and pawed over it, breathed on it, done heaven knows what else as well as read it. And knowing this spoils my reading. The other readers get in my way. I can feel their presence on the cover and on the pages. They even make it smell differently from my own books. In ~ Aidan Chambers

[Google is] an omnivorous collector of information, a hyperencyclopedic vault of human knowledge, an unerring auctioneer, an eerily skilful student of languages, behaviour, and desires. ~ Steven Levy

Yet the laboriously sought musical epiphany rarely compares to the unsought, even unwanted tune whose ambush is violent and sudden: the song the cab driver was tuned to, the song rumbling from the speaker wedged against the fire-escape railing, the song tingling from the transistor on the beach blanket. To locate those songs again can become, with age, something like a religious quest, as suggested by the frequent use of the phrase "Holy Grail" to describe hard-to-find tracks. The collector is haunted by the knowledge that somewhere on the planet an intact chunk of his past still exists, uncorrupted by time or circumstance. ~ Geoffrey O'Brien

I'm beginning to realise that I'm either overly sentimental, or am a hoarder who struggles to part with things. In all honesty, I'm probably both. ~ Fennel Hudson

I'm not a collector. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Fireflies and Fame
As a child I would collect fireflies,
stuff them in a Coke bottle
capped with a wad of cotton
from my asthma medicine.
Tired of being just a collector
I turned Ted Bundy,
peeled off their wings,
then lined up their weightless bodies
into an elegant cursive script
spelling my name.
I stomped them all
like an Indian on a warpath
and for fifteen seconds of fame
my name lit up in Vegas neon
just like Liberace's. ~ Beryl Dov

She's a hypnotist collector; you are a walking antique ... ~ Bob Dylan

This week, penny collector Gene Sukie went to the bank and cashed in 10,000 pounds of pennies he had collected over 34 years, which were worth over 14,000 dollars. And, of course, I was in line behind him. ~ Tina Fey