Collection Quotes

“I am a collection of dismantled almosts.”
― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

“To build up a library is to create a life. It's never just a random collection of books.”
― Carlos María Domínguez, The House of Paper

“She tossed him a small mirror so that he could see the results, and what he saw horrified him.  The boiling concoction left a deep trail of burnt skin that stretched from the crown of his head all the way to his chin – almost like an artificial sluice that burned his flesh to form a large rivulet that ran down the center of his face.”
― Harvey Havel, The Odd and The Strange: A Collection of Very Short Fiction

“She put all of her weight against the sill of the balcony, her lovesick heart ready and willing to join the man she loved.  She closed her eyes and pushed herself forward.  From three stories high, she plummeted to the earth.  Before hitting the ground, she swore she saw him, racing down from the heavens and lifting her up towards God’s domain where lovers never ceased to rule.”
― Harvey Havel, The Odd and The Strange: A Collection of Very Short Fiction

“She has learned to love. To fear. To hate. And then to love again. Through it all, she writes.” ~Once Upon A Time There Was A Girl”
― Kimberly Kinrade, Bits of You & Pieces of Me

“A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn."

À qui la faute? (1872)”
― Victor Hugo

“Just tell yourself they're only stories.

Pamela K. Kinney (Spectre Nightmares and Visitations)”
― Pamela K. Kinney

“This is the strange undoing of a collection, of a house and of a family. It is the moment of fissure when grand things are taken and when family objects, known and handled and loved, become stuff.”
― Edmund de Waal, The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss

“A good life is a collection of happy moments.”
― Denis Waitley

“The house burned in the fire. Her house. Her prison of lies and of denial. Her American dream turned nightmare.”~Unbreakable Heart”
― Kimberly Kinrade, Bits of You & Pieces of Me

“Her pockets yielded only ordinary feathers, shells, and seedpods, so she hurried back to the shack and stood in front of her feather-wall, window-shopping. The most graceful were the tail feathers from a tundra swan.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“I deal in the ideal—and that's an idea. Average people collect things, but I gather my thoughts, and my brain is my warehouse. But what about a duck? It has one word on its mind, quack, which is its answer to every question, so does that mean it's got the most efficiently organized cerebral cortex in the universe?”
― Jarod Kintz, Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.

“You might think the desert dreams of the sea, but I think deserts dream of other deserts, scorched spaces just like themselves. With them, they don’t feel so alien, so bizarre. They don’t have the bother of explaining—the way they would with the sea—how it is they’re all sand and rock and sagebrush and how the only sound is the wind across the earth.”
― Pascha Sotolongo, The Only Sound Is the Wind: Stories

“The birds had multiplied. She'd installed rows upon rows of floating melamine shelves above shoulder height to accommodate the expression of her once humble collection. Though she'd had bird figurines all over the apartment, the bulk of her prized collection was confined to her bedroom because it had given her joy to wake up to them every morning. Before I'd left, I had a tradition of gifting her with bird figurines. It began with a storm petrel, a Wakamba carving of ebony wood from Kenya I had picked up at the museum gift shop from a sixth-grade school field trip. She'd adored the unexpected birthday present, and I had hunted for them since.
Clusters of ceramic birds were perched on every shelf. Her obsession had brought her happiness, so I'd fed it. The tiki bird from French Polynesia nested beside a delft bluebird from the Netherlands. One of my favorites was a glass rainbow macaw from an Argentinian artist that mimicked the vibrant barrios of Buenos Aires. Since the sixth grade, I'd given her one every year until I'd left: eight birds in total.
As I lifted each member of her extensive bird collection, I imagined Ma-ma was with me, telling a story about each one. There were no signs of dust anywhere; cleanliness had been her religion. I counted eighty-eight birds in total. Ma-ma had been busy collecting while I was gone.
I couldn't deny that every time I saw a beautiful feathered creature in figurine form, I thought of my mother. If only I'd sent her one, even a single bird, from my travels, it could have been the precursor to establishing communication once more.
Ma-ma had spoken to her birds often, especially when she cleaned them every Saturday morning. I had imagined she was some fairy-tale princess in the Black Forest holding court over an avian kingdom.
I was tempted to speak to them now, but I didn't want to be the one to convey the loss of their queen.
Suddenly, however, Ma-ma's collection stirred.
It began as a single chirp, a mournful cry swelling into a chorus. The figurines burst into song, tiny beaks opening, chests puffed, to release a somber tribute to their departed beloved. The tune was unfamiliar, yet its melancholy was palpable, rising, surging until the final trill when every bird bowed their heads toward the empty bed, frozen as if they hadn't sung seconds before.
I thanked them for the happiness they'd bestowed on Ma-ma.”
― Roselle Lim, Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune

“if you so much as make a single joke right now or butcher a playground nursery rhyme about trees and kissing and baby carriages, I'll let myself into your apartment and use your comic book collection as kindling. Capiche?”
― Alexandria Bellefleur, Written in the Stars

“You think your life is unfurling in a certain way, and you let yourself grow happy about it, a smile rising at the slightest thing. A boy in short pants eating a pastelito makes you grin like a lunatic at the vision of your own hoped‐for children, their dark shiny heads rising, year by year, from the Cuban earth, your wife towering behind them, kind and wise. Then you find yourself in a midnight cemetery guarding your mustache from the covetous ghost of an American woman you once loved. Who wouldn’t laugh?”
― Pascha Sotolongo, The Only Sound Is the Wind: Stories

“I'm a consoomer. Instead of wall-to-wall Funko Pops, I collect ducks, and I store them all in a pen at night where they can be on display to inspire jealous desire in foxes, coyotes, and Miss Marple.”
― Jarod Kintz, A Memoir of Memories and Memes

“I can't deny the skill would be a valuable asset to my collection.”
― Rae Knightly, Ben Archer and the Alien Skill

“I could float and drift and not have to speak to anybody, explain anything, just swim beneath the surface. It was always my escape. It still is now.

Family, life, love, search, Cecelia Ahern, The Marble Collector”
― Cecelia Ahern, The Marble Collector

“Sometimes I wonder if love is enough, or if there are levels of love.”
― Cecelia Ahern, The Marble Collector

“I know it's scary, changes can be scary.”
― Cecelia Ahern, The Marble Collector

“Er verließ seinen Vater, Witwer seit wenigen Stunden, um, wie er sagte, "Statuen kaufen" zu gehen, und dabei schien er zu scherzen. Er war den figürlichen Nachbildungen des Schmerzes und der Ruhe schon seit früher Kindheit geneigt gewesen, seit seiner Kindheit war er ein Sammler, die Museen waren in ihm; seine Statuen waren seine Spielzeuge, ein Vorrecht derjenigen, die von Geburt an verloren sind und an ihrem Ende debütieren.”
― Fleur Jaeggy, The Water Statues

“Mindscrapes”
― Diego Antolini, Mindscrapes: A Collection of Drift Stories

“My shell collection

Here are my shells, orderly to the eye, mysterious to the mind. Some are rough and grainy, others are soft and pearly. Mine are all empty, but out in the sea there are empty ones too – as many as there are full. When the creatures emerge, they leave part of themselves behind. That is why I think of these spirals as living though they are asleep in their forms.”
― Sarah Emily Miano, Van Rijn

“Think in hashtags!”
― Steven Magee

“Write in hashtags!”
― Steven Magee

“Show her the Miyabi collection," Alexander says.
Eden gawks at the knives Rochester dutifully sets out for her. There's one of everything. A chef's knife, a prep, a utility, a nakiri, a santoku, one for paring, one for boning, and one for bread. There's also a sharpening steel to round it all off. They're all very beautiful, made with a flowering Damascus finish and gorgeous black ash wood handles.”
― Katrina Kwan, Knives, Seasoning, & A Dash of Love

“Family ultimately is a collection of strangers.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“My collection agitates her past the point of reason.”
― Claudia Gray, Bloodline

“Every couple's story left me with a smile on my face.”
― Rendi Ansyah, Beyond the Bouquet: A Symphony of Love in Fifty Movements