
“If there were libraries for musical instruments and for furniture, that would be great. Just to have something for a while, and then be able to let it go again.”
Will Oldham
more infosource: Will Oldham on Bonnie “Prince” Billy, ed. by Alan Licht (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012), 315.
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category: consumerism, library, possession, stuff
medium: Interview
“Let’s understand that things are thieves of time because the more things you have, the more time you have to spend working to pay for them, the more your life is chained to a rhythm of perpetual purchase.”
Paul Hawken
more infosource: The 11th Hour, produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio; directed by Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen; distributed by Warner Independent Pictures; and released August 2007.
category: consumerism, economy, materialism, time
medium: Film
“Like many people, I’m frustrated at the round of buying stuff that is designed to be replaced quickly. I want to break the loop with this bike. I’m going to ride it for thirty years or more and I want to savor the process of acquiring it. I want the best bike I can afford, and I want to grow old with it.”
Robert Penn
more infosource: It’s All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), 11.
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category: bicycle, consumerism, materialism, quality, workmanship
medium: Nonfiction
“I don’t want to talk about me, of course, but it seems as though far too much attention has been lavished on you lately—that your greed and vanities and quest for self-fulfillment have been catered to far too much. You just want and want and want. You believe in yourself excessively. You don’t believe in Nature anymore. It’s too isolated from you. You’ve abstracted it. It’s so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life’s highway past all the crushed animals and the Big Gulp cups.”
Joy Williams
more infosource: Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals (New York: Vintage, 2002), 3.
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category: consumerism, environment, greed, nature
medium: nonfiction
“Five moves, they say, equal a fire. But those who haven’t moved may begin to need a fire.”
Mary Catherine Bateson
more infosource: Composing a Further life (New York: Knopf, 2010), 38.
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category: consumerism, fire, move, paring down, simple life, stuff
medium: nonfiction
“I am doing it right over again. I am sick of clothes and gewgaws and bags and advertisements and newspaper clippings and society pages and the new Vogue and fittings and the main floors of department stores and the radio—jazz and magazines and hairdressers. I am sick sick to death of them. But I clutch at them madly, like smoking or drinking—anything to keep from thinking.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
more infosource: Locked Rooms and Open Doors: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh 1933–1935 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), 15.
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category: consumerism, distraction, stuff
medium: diary
notes: diary entry dated Friday, February 24, 1933
“I have been in a slow process of selling and giving away everything I own…It started a couple of years ago. It was in response to going to these Golden Globe type events and they just give you stuff. You don’t want it. You don’t use it. And then Mad Men started to become a success on a popular level and people started sending me stuff, just boxes of shit. Gifts for every holiday, clothes. One day, I looked around and thought ‘I don’t want this stuff, I didn’t ask for it.’ So I started giving it to friends or charity stores, or if it is still in its box I might sell it for a hundred bucks. I liked it so I didn’t stop.”
Vincent Kartheiser
more infosource: “The Observer,” by Tim Adams, in The Guardian, Sunday, April 25, 2010.
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category: awards, consumerism, Golden Globes, Mad Men, materialism, paring down, stuff
medium: newspaper profile
notes: Vincent Kartheiser plays Pete Campbell in the television series Mad Men


consumerism