Completist Collector Quotes

A painting walks into the room supported by the collector. It is the painting of a nude by a contemporary artist. She is scarred by shadows from venetian blinds. "The ritual scarification of light and shadow," I say. But am thinking, silently, the female nude is the self-ironization of the male. She, in his shadow, by design. ~ Carla Harryman

What is it about shoes? I mean, I like most kind of clothes, but a fabulous pair of shoes can just reduce me to jelly. Sometimes, when no-one else is at home, I open my wardrobe and just stare at all my pairs of shoes, like some mad collector. And once I lined them all up on my bed and took a photograph of them. Which might seem a bit weird, but I thought, I've got loads of photos of people I don't really like, so why not take one of something I love? ~ Sophie Kinsella

It is possible that the most misunderstood man upon earth is the collector of books ... ~ Vincent Starrett

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

My specialty as a collector is books that almost have value. When I love a book, I don't buy the first edition, because those have become incredibly expensive. But I might buy a beat-up copy of the second edition, third printing, which looks almost exactly the same as the first edition except that a couple of typos have been fixed. ~ Lev Grossman

I'm a record collector. I've got over 2000 records. It's so nice for me to have records that are me. That's me on there. ~ Jenny Hoyston

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

Seeking more information, I walked through the market listening to the gossip and discovered that our new general, the man sent to quell the unrest in the east, was the second son of a provincial tax collector whose only claims to recognition were that he had commanded some legions in Britain in the heady, early days of the invasion, that his brother had once stood for consul, and that he had been a governor in some African province, where the locals had thrown turnips at him.
Despairing, I returned to the house, and that despair deepened later when Horgias came home with the news that our new paragon of martial virtue had until recently been hiding in Greece, in disgrace for having fallen asleep during one of Nero's recitals in the theatre. ~ M.C. Scott

For a day or two Fleury became quite active. He had his book about the advance of civilization in India to consider and this was one reason why he had taken an interest in the behaviour of the Collector. He asked a great number of questions and even bought a notebook to record pertinent information.
"Why, if the Indian people are happier under our rule," he asked a Treasury official, "do they not emigrate from those native states like Hyderabad which are so dreadfully misgoverned and come and live in
British India?"
"The apathy of the native is well known," replied the official stiffly. "He is not enterprising."
Fleury wrote down "apathy" in a flowery hand and then, after a moment's hesitation, added "not enterprising". ~ J.G. Farrell

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

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

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

I wonder what it would feel like to laugh like that, with complete abandon. ~ Victoria Scott

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

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

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

I'm definitely a vintage collector. I have a wardrobe of core basics that I like to spice up with different colors, new accessories, and I love to try on new things to invite something different. I find, with every new stage of my life, my self-image shifts with new duties and responsibilities, and so does my fashion style. ~ Camila Alves

as old as we may be in flesh, we are always young in the bone ~ Jeffery Deaver

I suppose some rich private collector has it now," Sir Reynold moaned. "But how could he keep it a secret? The mural is one of the most recognizable paintings in the hworld! Every civilized person hwould spot it in an instant!" "What did it look like?" said Fred Colon. ~ Terry Pratchett

Eventually the Collector from the prophecy would be born. ~ Jessica Fortunato

My mother was being hounded by a debt collector over a debt that she didn't owe, and she eventually just paid it because she wanted the calls to stop. I was very surprised. It sounded so strange. I started poking around on the Internet and found this was extremely common. ~ Jake Halpern

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

Vinyl has gotten to the point where it's exclusively for the collector, I guess. ~ Josh Homme

My brother had boxes of comic books. He was really the collector. ~ Michael Shanks

Despite the creations of new sections, secret intelligence activity remained mistrusted and neglected in military circles, although there were a few enthusiasts like Baden-Powell, who went on foreign trips disguised as a butterfly collector and regarded spying as sport. ~ Clive Ponting

A library should fill our leisure with adventure. It is a refuge from the commonplace and the dull, a sanctuary where all the trials, the tribulations, and the boredoms of the outer world are forbidden and where such an evil thing as a tax-collector may be forgotten and, peradventure, forgiven. ~ E. Norman Torry

I'm not a collector. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Magpies have an acquisitive instinct, and a similarly indiscriminate passion for accumulating junk afflicts one in a hundred of the human race. But that is not what we mean by a collector. ~ John Carter

A collector is anxious to acquire specimens to illustrate a period or a school, and forgets that a single masterpiece can teach us more than any number of the mediocre products of a given period or school. We classify too much and enjoy too little. The sacrifice of the aesthetic to the so-called scientific method of exhibition has been the bane of many museums. ~ Kakuzo Okakura

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

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

I was 16 before I met another passionate collector. One summer, I visited England; a new friend took me calling on his dotty, brilliant old aunt. She occupied a quaint house in Kent. Its walls were lined with glass-fronted cases full of what? Ancient shoe buckles. ~ Allan Gurganus

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

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

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

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

My mum is a big collector of art. ~ Agnes Obel

I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment. ~ John Fowles

We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector. ~ Walter Benjamin

Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past. ~ Susan Sontag