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Quote by Shannon Messenger

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Exile

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Shannon Messenger

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“Beth had been a middle school science teacher and Joni was a librarian and they both had collections of weird stuff they had found. Bizarre, misspelled letters written by lovelorn eighth graders. Obscene Polaroids left in between the pages of library books. They used to call each other on the phone to share their latest discovery, and Critter had always remained a little off to the side, never feeling quite as sharp or ironic as they were. Critter was an electrician, primarily home repair, and so he didn't usually come across anything except bad wiring and faulty lighting fixtures.”

CollectionsBizarrePolaroids
Book:Stay Awake
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“I really admire people who don’t need to live surrounded by lots of stuff. My bedroom is piled up with clothes and books, papers and photographs. I like to collect things, anything I can grab from wherever I’m travelling. I think it’s the sign of slight anxiety to always want something around you to represent a good moment you had, to hang on to the leftovers. But then they’re a pleasure to look at too, so it’s not all negative.”

PastAnxietyLibraryLifestyleCollections
Author:Isabelle Huppert
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“This has led some scholars to suggest that collecting is a way of managing fears about death by creating a form of immortality. This is consistent with a popular theory in social psychology called the terror management theory (TMT). TMT grows out of an existential predicament--that people, like animals, are mortal. But unlike animals, we are aware of our own mortality. Knowledge of the inevitability of death and its unpredictability can produce paralyzing fear. To cope with this potential terror, cultures provide beliefs, rituals, and sanctioned strategies for managing it. One of these strategies is the belief that some part of ourselves can live on after we die. Producing or amassing something of value is one way to accomplish this. Thus a collection offers the potential for immortality.”

CollectionsCollecting
Book:Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things
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