"Forget The Word Need"

"How many times have you said to yourself, "I don't need that"?  You're at a flea market, and there's this beautiful old serape blanket beckoning or a crazy yellow chair that someone has painted with an even crazier image of Van Gogh or a little primitive landscape that is like the 20 you already have.  You circle around it, you hesitate, and then you walk away empty-handed, either feeling proud of yourself for resisting the temptation or kicking yourself for not indulging your desire for something that could have added a little happiness to your life.  "Need is a wretched word.  It holds us in bondage," says my friend and collector Gail Peachin, who lives in an old farmhouse in the Catskills.  "There is very little we need - food, a roof over our heads, a toothbrush, and maybe a good pair of shoes."  Most of the things I have collected all my life were certainly not necessary to my daily survival.  But if you stripped all those things away from your rooms, tabletops, walls, and floors, where would the color, sparkle, humor, fun, and creativity exist?"

- Mary Randolph Carter (author:  Never Stop to Think..Do I have a Place for This?)