The Collector Quotes
"I’m sorry I’m so suspicious, I said. It’s just that you’re all I’ve got that makes life worth living."
"But I may say I have never been like that, I was never once punished at school."
"The only other thing is sex. You want to do something to me."
"I can’t live all the time down here. I must have some fresh air and light."
"I don’t know how long people could go without food, she seemed pale and weak to me."
"Some of the girls in the Annexe, it was really disgusting, the looks they’d give him."
"She was just like a woman. Unpredictable. Smiling one minute and spiteful the next."
"You think I’m mad because of what I’ve done. I’m not mad."
"I wouldn’t expect anything else, I said. I was red as a beetroot by then."
"No one will ever understand how happy we were—just me, really, but there were times when I consider she didn’t mind in spite of what she said."
"She hated dirt as much as I do, although she used to laugh at me about it."
"Of course it wasn’t all peace and light, several times she tried to escape, which just showed."
"She told me once it was a sign of madness to want everything clean."
"We all want things we can’t have. Being a decent human being is accepting that."
"The truth was she couldn’t do ugly things. She was too beautiful."
"I’m going to kill you. I realize you’d let me starve to death."
"I don’t care what he does. So long as I live."
"He’s never had anything to do with girls. With girls like me, anyway."
"She stood in front of the fire and after a bit she said, Oh, God."
"I don’t know if I believe in God. I prayed to him furiously in the van when I thought I was going to die."
"Don’t you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty?"
"The next day she was all right again, though she didn’t talk."
"It’s all the vile unspeakable things he could do."
"Nothing makes him mind. But I’ve seen a way to get a message out. I could put a message in a little bottle down the place. I could put a bright ribbon round it. Perhaps someone would see it somewhere some day."
"The ordinary man is the curse of civilization. But he’s so ordinary that he’s extraordinary."
"I want to paint sunlight on children’s faces, or flowers in a hedge or a street after April rain. The essences. Not the things themselves."
"It’s despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they’ve won a lot of money."
"The only real person in my world is Caliban. It can’t be understood. It just is."
"It’s just that there’s so much time to get through. Endless endless endless time."
"What I write isn’t natural. It’s like two people trying to keep up a conversation."
"I’ve broken all the ugly ashtrays and pots. Ugly ornaments don’t deserve to exist."
"You draw a line and you know at once whether it’s a good or a bad line. But you write a line and it seems true and then you read it again later."
"He’s given me an expensive Swiss watch. I say I will use it while I am here and give it back when I go."
"Because sometimes I like to remember the days when men were nice to me. That's all."
"What I’ve been thinking is that as the walls of this cellar (and the outer one) are stones—not stone—then behind the stones there must be earth."
"What Minny calls welcome-to-the-tribe-of-women. It means they’re going to treat you like a grown-up, but they don’t really think you are and anyhow they’re jealous of you."
"But it’s what people feel about art that I respect. Not what or who they know."
"So he went through the door. Only a second. But I stooped like lightning and got the nail up and into my skirt pocket."
"He said, what’s the game? I’ll stay here, I won’t move."
"It’s as if the lights have fused. I’m here in the black truth."
"They persecute us, they crowd us out, they send us to Coventry, they sneer at us, they yawn at us, they blindfold themselves and stuff up their ears."
"He likes me to play the fool. The stupidest things I do he calls witty."