"You must not lie about trilobites, nor yet about time."
— Richard Fortey

"I believe profoundly in the importance of museums; I would go as far as to say that you can judge a society by the quality of its museums. "
— Richard Fortey (Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum)

"Westwards along the basement, I let myself through a heavy door just beyond the dead giraffes. There was a notice on the wall that read "Departmental cock"--I never did find out what that meant. "
— Richard Fortey (Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum)

"A life accumulates a collection: of people, work and perplexities. We are all our own curators. "
— Richard Fortey (Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum)

"The great proliferation of museums in the nineteenth century was a product of the marriage of the exhibition as a way of awakening intelligent interest in the visitor with the growth of collections that was associated with empire and middle-class affluence. Attendance at museums was as much associated with moral improvement as with explanation of the human or natural world."
— Richard Fortey (Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum)

"But, for now, I retreated back down the little hidden staircase into the familiar world of the basement of the Natural History Museum, and to the embrace of the trilobites."
— Richard Fortey (Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum)