Collectors Quotes

“I hate people who collect things and classify things and give them names and then forget all about them. That’s what people are always doing in art. They call a painter an impressionist or a cubist or something and then they put him in a drawer and don’t see him as a living individual painter any more.”
― John Fowles, The Collector

“Of all books printed, probably not more than half are ever read. Many are embalmed in public libraries; many go into private quarters to fill spaces; many are glanced at and put away...scarcely opened until the fire needs kindling. The most ardent book-lovers are not always the greatest readers; indeed, the rabid bibliomaniac seldom reads at all. To him books are as ducats to the miser, something to be hoarded and not employed... So pleasant it is to buy book; so tiresome to utilize them.”
― Flora Haines Loughead

“...the true collector’s only home is his own museum.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Kaohinani is a Hawaiian word meaning “gatherer of beautiful things.”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings

“The mania for collecting can easily turn simply into accumulating. All one has to do is develop one collecting interest after another, and so on. But collectors of a particular category of articles almost always lose interest once they have reached their goal. When the collection is complete, what else is there to do?...Failure makes it possible to avoid the effort: he simply carries on as before. (pp. 25-26)”
― Jacques Bonnet, Phantoms on the Bookshelves

“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

“—that exquisite sensual pleasure of collectors, who are a tactile species—”
― Georges Rodenbach, The Bells of Bruges

“I know what I am to him. A butterfly he has always wanted to catch. I remember (the very fisrt time i met him) G.P. saying that collectors were the worst animals of all. He meant art collectors, of course. I didn't really understand, I thought he was just trying to shock Caroline - and me. But of course, he is right. They're anti-life, anti-art, anti-everything.”
― John Fowles, The Collector

“She knew from other places she'd worked that rich people liked owning things made by different kinds of people--Africans, Eskimos, Native Americans. It didn't seem to matter what the object looked like, or to what gory purpose it might have been put, as long as it had belonged to some other people first, and as long ago as possible.”
― Barbara Neely, Blanche on the Lam

“Being a college or pro football fan is in the same intellectual category of Funko Pop collecting. It's using a mass-crafted product to self-identify yourself because without people associating you with a certain team you have nothing to do with, you have no personality.”
― Jarod Kintz, Powdered Saxophone Music

“Sir Edmund is a collector, an insatiable, relentless collector, with an interest in anomalies and mutations, aberrations and malformations of life in or around the realm of water. If it swims or paddles or blows bubbles in any way oddly, then he'll have it killed, stuffed, or put in a jar, and brought to his private library.”
― Jess Kidd, Things in Jars

“His purchase of the Vincent [First Folio] signaled his breakthrough as a great collector. He had learned the price of hesitation and quibbling. He had overcome the psychological hurdle that all beginning collectors confront: spending big money. Some collectors do not obtain their finest pieces until the summit of their careers. Folger achieved many of his greatest triumphs at the dawn of his quest. This was his seventh First Folio (W 59, F 1). Some collectors lose great objects because they take too long to hit their stride. They lack the confidence to recognize opportunities or the will to act decisively, even when they could afford the piece. They posses the financial resources but not the will to deploy them. Great opportunities come too early in their careers and they do not act. They fail to realize that falling stars are rare, that planets rarely align. Henry learned these lessons early in the game. 140 [Note: First offered at £5,000, Folger's quibbling led the owner to withdraw the Folio. We offered later for £10,000, Folger bought it immediately.]”
― Andrea Mays, The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger's Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare's First Folio

“His purchase of the Vincent [First Folio] signaled his breakthrough as a great collector. He had learned the price of hesitation and quibbling. He had overcome the psychological hurdle that all beginning collectors confront: spending big money. Some collectors do not obtain their finest pieces until the summit of their careers. Folger achieved many of his greatest triumphs at the dawn of his quest. This was his seventh First Folio (W 59, F 1). Some collectors lose great objects because they take too long to hit their stride. They lack the confidence to recognize opportunities or the will to act decisively, even when they could afford the piece. They possess the financial resources but not the will to deploy them. Great opportunities come too early in their careers and they do not act. They fail to realize that falling stars are rare, that planets rarely align. Henry learned these lessons early in the game. 140 [Note: First offered at £5,000, Folger's quibbling led the owner to withdraw the Folio. When offered later for £10,000, Folger bought it immediately.]”
― Andrea Mays, The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger's Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare's First Folio

“People who collect objects of rarity, my dear Eustacie, will often, so I believe, go to quite unheard of lengths to acquire the prize they covet.”
― Georgette Heyer, The Talisman Ring

“Frank Buck had considerable experience in dealing with the red ape, as he was one of most prolific animal collectors of the modern era. It is with a combination of amazement and horror that one reads his travel journals. The sheer numbers of animals that he killed and captured is staggering. Indeed, after scrolling through the writings of Buck, Carl Hagenbeck, Alfred Wallace, Henry Ward, and the rest of the 19th and 20th century collectors, one can argue with strong confidence that the natural history museum and zoological park have been a driving force in the diminution and extinction of animal species on our planet.”
― Jason Hribal, Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

“Before long he found himself in a conference room with Steve Jobs. “The first thing I noticed was that it had windows that looked out onto oak-covered hills. And then I looked around at the paintings on the wall, and they were all paintings of California landscapes with oak trees. And I realized that Steve Jobs was a tree fanatic.”
― Amy Stewart