"I worked at the Smithsonian for a number of years. I had a very low-level job. I didn't have much responsibility, but I did have a Smithsonian ID badge that gave me access to all of the museums on the mall, and also the National Gallery of Art. In those days, you could go anywhere, which you can't do now. You could get in behind the scenes and wander along these tunnels. There is a scene in "Prince of Flowers" where the characters are in the Paleontology Department of the Museum of Natural History where they really do have this Raiders of the Lost Ark-type vast space filled with all of these unopened cartons. … I was really entranced with the idea of living in a museum. In Winterlong there are two parallel storylines and the one for Raphael takes place among this guild or tribe of curators who live in the ruins of the Smithsonian Institution."
More by Elizabeth Hand
See allResonant Thoughts
"The built house seems all so fit,- everyway as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the nature of things,- we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The very perfection …"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"A t that moment, a Colonel of Sanitation came striding by, in his green uniform. “You there!” he cried. “Ho…"
— Donald Barthelme"What happens in our future can change the meaning of what has happened in our past."
— John Twelve Hawks"You have many years to live—do things you will be proud to remember when you're old."
— John Brunner"In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of thi…"
— F. Scott Fitzgerald"Presently, however, we came to a small clearing and there, squatting at the mouth of its burrow was the mus…"
— Gerald Durrell"Do you want an absolute prediction? Then you want only today, and you reject tomorrow. You are the ultimate…"
— Frank Herbert
