Antiques Quotes

“Fraud is the daughter of greed.”
― Jonathan Gash, The Great California Game

“Priceless things matter not for their value, but because they offer us an enduring reminder of stability and permanence.”
― Barbara Taylor Bradford, Power of a Woman

“Time meant nothing.
She loved him in an instant.
She would love him forever.”
― Ellen Read, The Dragon Sleeps

“The Theory of Sexual Understanding is mine. I created it. It works between a man and a woman. It's this: Everything's up to her.”
― Jonathan Gash, The Great California Game

“The mother was convinced that the purchase of this piece of furniture would facilitate the bond she so hungered for with Gabriela, although she hated the unnerving history associated with the paravent. But, she thought, what could it possibly do to a child?”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“The risks in antiques fraud are relative. Other criminals risk the absolute. You've never heard of a fraudster involved in a shoot-out, of the "Come and get me, copper!" sort. Or of some con artist needing helicopter gunships to bring him. No, we subtle-mongers do it with the smile, the promise, the hint. And we have one great ally: greed. And make no mistake. Greed is everywhere, like weather.”
― Jonathan Gash, The Great California Game

“The spicy sweet fragrance of the large full blooms, which rambled over the side and top of an arched metal framework, welcomed them as they walked beneath them. Shafts of sunlight pierced the canopy, dust motes floating languorously in the golden beams that spotlighted clumps of wayward snowdrops growing in the lawn.”
― Ellen Read, The Dragon Sleeps

“She loved old things. The brown-brick place was a survivor of the 1907 earthquake and fire, and proudly bore a plaque from the historical society. The building had a haunted history- it was the site of a crime of passion- but Tess didn't mind. She'd never been superstitious.
The apartment was filled with items she'd collected through the years, simply because she liked them or was intrigued by them. There was a balance between heirloom and kitsch. The common thread seemed to be that each object had a story, like a pottery jug with a bas-relief love story told in pictures, in which she'd found a note reading, "Long may we run. -Gilbert." Or the antique clock on the living room wall, each of its carved figures modeled after one of the clockmaker's twelve children. She favored the unusual, so long as it appeared to have been treasured by someone, once upon a time. Her mail spilled from an antique box containing a pigeon-racing counter with a brass plate engraved from a father to a son. She hung her huge handbag on a wrought iron finial from a town library that had burned and been rebuilt in a matter of weeks by an entire community.
Other people's treasures captivated her. They always had, steeped in hidden history, bearing the nicks and gouges and fingerprints of previous owners. She'd probably developed the affinity from spending so much of her childhood in her grandmother's antique shop.”
― Susan Wiggs, The Apple Orchard

“Marcelian Piaffus adored the heirloom's macabre biography, she could tell. Strangely enough, he had a disregard for its severity despite his beliefs, especially in the hands of a child, and even though Estefania had always been aware that darkness could latch itself onto objects, having grown up among unspeakable atrocities, she decided her daughter had too much grit to decline into madness.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“You ask for happiness, Ms. Stuart. Certainly, that’s what everyone wants–Aristotle said happiness is the ultimate goal of all people, and that the desire for wealth and fame and power are all just paths to happiness. And yet…happiness…it’s a bit abstract, isn’t it? As the front door says, I deal in antiquities and tangibles. Which is not to say I can’t cope with more aspirational requests–if you asked for the aforementioned wealth or power, or for youth, or beauty, or inspiration, I have items that can grant all those wishes. But happiness… Can you be a bit more specific? Can you tell me what would make you happy?”
― Tim Pratt, Antiquities and Tangibles and Other Stories

“What is the sweetness of flowers compared to the savour of dust and confinement?”
― Peter Ackroyd

“The pieces didn't really coordinate and could be described in no other way than 'eclectic', but once labeled 'eclectic', valuable mismatches generally become fantastically stylish. Very similar to the way adding cash value to 'crazy' results in a whimsical 'eccentric'; you have to buy more flattering adjectives.”
― Mandy Ashcraft, Small Orange Fruit

“But Goldilocks, like many freaks, Does not appreciate antiques.”
― Roald Dahl, Revolting Rhymes

“The love of old things is a way of respecting time.”
― Wu Ming-Yi, The Stolen Bicycle

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art claims to be the largest in the western hemisphere. It's right, but I'm not too sure about the arts bit. Don't misunderstand me. It's got tons of genuine art. It's also got tons of stuff that is hard to classify. I can't come to grips with a massive cube with a grandiose title. I allow that it's art, but not my sort. I need the big stone block to tell me something about the bloke whose name's on the caption, and it doesn't. That off my chest, I admit that any place with 3.3 million works of art truly is a wonder.”
― Jonathan Gash, The Great California Game

“The exhibition gobsmacked me. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Here was quite a small building, not many people about, getting little attention. And inside they'd pulled together a staggering display of Regency furniture. I've seen most of the stuff that matters. I simply stood there, gaping.”
― Jonathan Gash, The Great California Game

“Remember preconceptions? Even though I'd landed hoping simply to somehow scrape the transatlantic fare home, I'd been an arrogant swine, imbued with that Old World toffee-nosed attitude: The United States of America's got no culture, not deep down.”
― Jonathan Gash, The Great California Game

“Take it all, all of it!" Greg cried out. "These things here...I've been making them better, fixing them. It doesn't matter...they don't matter. I've been here before." He paused to try to collect himself. "It's my past, my present...these things--" He lifted a hand out to the objects around him. "These things are me." Now whispering, "Can't you see me?”
― Dayna Rubin, Running Parallel

“The Nazi salute was performed by public officials in the USA from 1892 through 1942. The researcher Dr. Rex Curry asks 'What happened to the photographs and films of the American Nazi salute performed by federal, state, county, and local officials?' Those photos and films are rare because people don't want to know the truth. Public officials in the USA who preceded the German socialist (Hitler) and the Italian socialist (Mussolini) were sources for the stiff-armed salute (and robotic chanting) in those countries and other foreign countries.”
― Micky Barnetti, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Swastikas, Nazis, Pledge of Allegiance Lies Exposed by Rex Curry and Francis & Edward Bellamy

“She ran her hand through a shell bowl absently, letting the trinkets slide through her fingers. Mostly they weren't cut or polished the way a human jeweler would treat them: they sparkled here and there out of a chunk of brownish rock. A single crystal might shine like the weapon of a god- but be topped by the lumpy bit where it had been prized out of a geode.
Ariel regarded the stones with fascination. Of course they were beautiful. Yet she still found the bits and baubles from the human world, made by humans, far more alluring. Why? Why couldn't she be content with the treasures of the sea the way the ocean had made them? What was wrong with them that they had to be altered, or put on something else, or framed, or forced in a bunch onto a necklace, in perfect, unnatural symmetry?”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“I don't hate my occupation: its cadaverous ivories, its pallid crockery, all the goods of the dead, the furniture that they made, the tables that they painted, the glasses from which they drank when life was still sweet to them. Truly, the occupation of an antiquarian is a situation almost ideal for a necrophiliac”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, The Necrophiliac

“All useless, according to the common sense of utility, yet all of them inspiring in me curiosity and the simplest delight. Delight in the fact that beautiful things made by people forty years ago sit around, bringing pleasure to a stranger in the now. It reminds
me of my duty, everyone's duty, to the future. My friends kids will need in twenty years to find crap like this at the markets so that they can feel held by the hands of past people's future dreams and not feel totally alone.”
― Ellena Savage, Blueberries: Essays Concerning Understanding

“Cinnamon-colored walls, rain on the windowpanes, vast quiet and a sense of depth and distance, like the varnish over the background of a nineteenth-century paintings. Rugs worn to threads, painted Japanese fans and antique valentines flickering in candlelight, Pierrots and doves and flowergarlanded hearts.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Going by Dr. Marriott's description, Zoe imagined it to be small and elegant as she peered into dozens of shelves, rummaging through the contents. There were globes and charts and atlases, pocket watches and hand-painted Indian silk, gold-plated cutlery, litter coffers of spice, inlaid combs, silver fasteners, trinket boxes, blown-glass figurines, turn-of-the-century postcards with foreign stamps, and portraits of Victorian authors in elaborate frames. But nowhere did she discover a stone of any kind, with or without runes.”
― Christine Brodien-Jones, The Glass Puzzle

“The items people own reveal something about the owners. Every quaint item that a person selects to surround themselves with has a basic quiddity, the essence, or inherent nature of things. As a people, we assign a value meaning not only to the things that we presently possess, but also to the items destined for one generation to hand down to the next generation.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“She picked up a roundish thing from the ground and shook the sand off. It was the top of an old ceramic jar, once painted bright blue and gold. The humans had so many jars. And amphorae. And vases. And vessels. And kegs. And tankards. So many... things... to put other... things in. Merfolk rarely had a necessity to store anything beyond the occasional rare and fancy comestible, like the sweet golden-wine they used to trade for when she was a child. Merfolk ate when they were hungry, almost never had the need to drink anything, and rarely had a reason to store food for the future.
She dropped the lid and sighed, drifting over to the rock she used to perch on while admiring her collection. Things, so many things. Things she never found out the proper use for in her short time on land. Because she had been too busy mooning over Eric.
In some ways, that was the part of the seagull's story that bothered her the most. She could not believe the reaction her traitor heart had when the bird mentioned his name.
Eric.
Eric remembered something?
He wrote an opera about it? About her?
It wasn't just the flattery of it, though. If Eric remembered enough to compose music about it... would he remember her, too? A little?
She remembered him far too often.
Despite the fact that her life had been ruined because of her pursuit of Eric, when she closed her eyes to go to sleep, her last thoughts were often still of him.
Or when a perfectly handsome, reasonably amusing (and mostly immortal- not an irrelevant point) merman tried to win her affections, and all she could think about was how his hair might look when it was dry. Would it bounce, like Eric's?”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“I'm not tootin' my own horn or anything, but I gotta say the buffet we set up on my dining room table with a blue-checkered cloth and some fresh daisies couldn't have looked more beautiful. Used my large, glazed, tobacco-spit pottery dish for the casserole, and with the crusty, buttered bread crumb topping, it was appetizing enough to be photographed for a food magazine. For the grits, I'd decided to sprinkle extra Parmesan over the top, so they were not only soft and creamy inside but a crispy golden brown outside. The congealed salad I fixed in a glass mold the shape of a pinecone, so when I turned it out on a plain white platter lined with leaves of romaine, the peaches and pecans could be clearly seen suspended in the lemony aspic in an interesting design. This time my hot buttermilk biscuits were as high and fluffy as Mama's, and next to the cloth-lined straw basket I had a big slab of the sweetest local country butter in the state of Texas, which I buy every weekend at the farmers' market out off Eldridge Parkway. We transferred Rosemary's yummy cake to the cut-crystal plate with tiny legs I remember my grandmamma using for birthday parties, and to tell the truth, I wondered how in hell I was gonna get through that lunch without cuttin' myself more than just a sliver of that mouthwatering caramel layer cake.”
― James Villas, Hungry for Happiness

“Americans don't have much history
so they like things they think are old.”
― Jasmine Warga, Other Words for Home

“Silas still owned the junk shop on Breyten Road, and only the very foolish would classify it as having anything to do with antiques; few in Breytenville owned antiques, and even fewer looked to acquire them. But for a knickknack at the right price, there was always a market, and for the right price any knickknack could easily be put on the market. Desperate times, desperate pleasures, that’s what Silas always said.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“White wrought-iron chairs scattered with blowsy cabbage roses. Robin's-egg blue porcelain cake stands, dotted with strawberries as small and red as lipstick kisses. Green-stemmed stools with speckled pink seats.”
― Charlotte Silver, Charlotte Au Chocolat: Memories of a Restaurant Girlhood