Vincent Starrett quotes

“When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.”
-- Vincent Starrett

Source : Vincent Starrett (1929). “Penny wise and book foolish”

#Book Quotes #Writing Quotes #Collecting Quotes

“But there can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson...Shall they not always live in Baker Street? Are they not there this moment, as one writes? Outside, the hansoms rattle through the rain, and Moriarty plans his latest devilry. Within, the sea-coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won case...So they still live for all that love them well; in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895.”
-- Vincent Starrett

#Country Quotes #Rain Quotes #Writing Quotes

“Every new search is a voyage to the Indies, a quest for buried treasure, a journey to the end of the rainbow; and whether or not at the end there shall be turned up a pot of gold or merely a delightful volume, there are always wonders along the way.”
-- Vincent Starrett

#Journey Quotes #Rainbow Quotes #Gold Quotes

“Only those things the heart believes are true.”
-- Vincent Starrett

Source : Vincent Starrett (2016). “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes [Revised Edition]”, p.67, Pickle Partners Publishing

#Believe Quotes #Heart Quotes

“A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane As night descends upon the fabled street: A lonely hansom splashes through the rain, And ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet. Here though the world explode, these two survive, And it is always eighteen ninety-five.”
-- Vincent Starrett

Source : Vincent Starrett, Peter Ruber (1995). “More Books Alive: New Treasures from a Master Literary Detective”, Battered Silicon Dispatch Box

#Lonely Quotes #Rain Quotes #Past Quotes

“The day before yesterday has always been a day of glamor, of gilt and glory. The present is sordid and prosaic. Time colors history as it does a meerschaum pipe.”
-- Vincent Starrett

Source : "Persons from Porlock: And Other Interruptions".

#Color Quotes #Yesterday Quotes #History Quotes

“Television is a constant stream of fact, opinions, lies, moral dilemmas, plots: an infinitely complex and sophisticated torrent of information. How could it not make you cleverer? The only people who ever thought television rotted the brain and made kids dumb were those with a vested interest in other ways of learning, or those who were intellectually insecure, usually about books.”

“To her- Hand in hand we come Christopher Robin and I To lay this book in your lap. Say you're surprised? Say you like it? Say it's just what you wanted? Because it's yours- because we love you.”

“Chum was a British boy's weekly which, at the end of the year was bound into a single huge book; and the following Christmas parents bought it as Christmas presents for male children.”

“The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down.”

“The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business.”

“Collecting is more than just buying objects.”

“I am a Buddhist, therefore I should not be collecting anything - however, I have a collection of Buddhas. I have a lot of them.”

“I'll always be grateful to rent collecting. I've put many of the tenants in my pictures.”

“By 17, I was submitting to publications and collecting my first rejection slips.”

“My own passion, all my life, has been non-collecting.”

Source : Louise Imogen Guiney (1926). “Letters of Louise Imogen Guiney”