Irving Stone quotes:

I thought art was dead rabbits hanging by their feet on a wall. I went to Italy and saw all the religious paintings, and they didn't move me all that much. Then someone invited me to see this van Gogh exhibit at the Rosenberg Gallery in San Francisco.

Someday my paintings will be hanging in the Louvre. [Vincent Van Gogh]

In the biographical novel, there's only one person involved. I, the author, spend two to five years becoming the main character. I do that so by the time you get to the bottom of Page 2 or 3, you forget your name, where you live, your profession and the year it is. You become the main character of the book. You live the book.

I spend several years trying to get inside the brain and heart of my subjects, listening to the interior monologues in their letters, and when I have to bridge the chasms between the factual evidence, I try to make an intuitive leap through the eyes and motivation of the person I'm writing about.

From the biography of Freud, by Irving Stone, said by Freud's fiance after he teased her for being sweet, "Beware of truly sweet people. They have will of iron.

The biographical novel is a true and documented story of one human being's journey across the face of the years, transmuted from the raw material of life into the delight and purity of an authentic art form.

There's nothing romantic about my work... I don't believe in inspiration. I believe that you get to your desk, you stay there, you work, you think of nothing else. You write and you write, and in the end, you write something good.

The best romance is inside marriage; the finest love stories come after the wedding, not before.

...Kita harus bertindak sesuai dengan nalar kita, dan selanjutnya biarkan Tuhan yang menentukan nilai akhirnya, Kalau kau yakin pada saat ini ingin menjadi pelayan Sang Pencipta kita dengan cara tertentu, maka keyakinan itulah satu-satunya pembimbing yang kau miliki menuju masa depan. Jangan takut untuk meyakini hal ini.

Reading is a stout-hearted activity, disporting courage, keenness, stick-to-it-ness. It is also, in my experience, one of the most thrilling and enduring delights of life, equal to a home run, a slam-dunk, or breaking the four-minute mile.

I came down successfully through Picasso and Braque, down through Pollock, I guess, but I began to stop at Franz Kline and the Abstractionists. I like their design, brilliant design, marvelous color layers. But I don't find any human content there. I'm from an old school, and painting has to have human content for me.

Strange story about Degas. He hated women, didn't want to be with them. Yet he spent much of his life painting them. He had seen his father maltreat his mother, must have had a deep fear that he'd do the same thing.

Even if there is endless documentation, it would be impossible to know what a man thought inside his own mind... This is where the novelist's creative imagination has to take over.

He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.

My goal always is to tell a universal story, meaning it's about a person who has an idea, a vision, a dream, an ambition to make the world somewhat less chaotic.

The biographical novel sets out to document this truth, for character is plot, character development is action, and character fulfillment is resolution.

Reading is a stouthearted activity, disporting courage, keenness, stick-to-it-ness.

I slept in van Gogh's bed. I worked in the room where he painted. I saw the place where he was cared for when he cut off his ear. I lived in the jail cell where he stayed. And I looked out the window. You remember that picture of the cornfields through the bars? That was what I saw.

[...] And suddenly Vincent clearly realised what his subconsciousness had known for a long time. All the talks about God are just childish elusion, just a lie that calms a scared and lonely ordinary mortal in a dark and neverending night. There is no God. Sure as fate - there is no God. There is only chaos - dismal, painful, cruel, agonizing, blind, endless chaos."

Story writers say that love is concerned only with young people, and the excitement and glamour of romance end at the altar. How blind they are. The best romance is inside marriage; the finest love stories come after the wedding, not before.

...and rout the magical mystical moonlight with fierce proof of its own greater power to light, to heat, to make everything known.

He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself?

We...believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.

He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic.

A new doctor had been sent for, Lazzaro of Pavia, who had administered to Lorenzo a pulverized mixture of diamonds and pearls. This hitherto infallible medicine had failed to help.

An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

Who wants to do good in this world must deny oneself. A man does not live on this Earth to be happy or to be honest only - he has to do great things for humanity, achieve the generosity of the spirit and rise above the banality where most of the people are drowning and wasting their days.

There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.

Each of us has his own alphabet with which to create poetry.

Our secret thoughts - do they ever show up? The small flame of our soul can be burning hot, but no one comes to its warmth. Passersby see only a small whiff going through the chimney. Don't we need to take care of that flame, cherish it and patiently wait until someone will come and sit at it, do we?

One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.

I do not know a better cure for mental illness than a book.

The one who has not seen Paris in the morning does not know how beautiful it is.

A man who has not suffered has nothing to tell with his paintings.

The most perfect guide is nature. Continue without fail to draw something every day.

To try to understand another human being, to grapple for his ultimate depths, that is the most dangerous of human endeavors.

Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.

To be an artist is first to be a manual laborer.

Art's a staple. Like bread or wine or a warm coat in winter. Those who think it is a luxury have only a fragment of a mind. Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food.

Bleed me of art, and there won't be enough liquid left in me to spit! [Michelangelo Buonorotti]

No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him.

After all, the world is still great.

Who loves "? lives, who lives - works, and who works has some bread.

He made his colours, built his stretchers, plastered his canvas, painted his pictures, carpentered his frames, and painted them. 'Too bad I can't buy my own pictures,' he murmured aloud. 'Then I'd be completely self-sufficient.'

Pleasure is one of the most important things in life, as important as food or drink.

There is no thrill of mortal danger to surpass that of a lone man trying to create something that never existed before.

I knew that I had to find out more about van Gogh. Even though I was far too young, and felt I did not have sufficient technique to write a book about Vincent van Gogh, I knew I had to try. If I didn't I would never write anything else.

Being mad is even pleasant. But only a madman understands that.

Morality is similar to religion - it is a somniferous drug which blinds people from seeing the squalor of their lives.

The writer ... an athlete required to break the four-minute mile every morning.

The maximum value of art is that it allows the artist to express himself.

There are neither good nor evil, only the existence and action.

How difficult it is to be simple.

He had always loved God. In his darkest hours he cried out, "God did not create us to abandon us.

Reading has always been the largest and most irreplaceable pleasure for Vincent; reading about other people's successes and failures, joys and sufferings seemed to bury his own failures.

Everyone has their own personality, its own character, and if he respects that, everything would finally fall over for good only.

You cannot be firmly certain about anything. You can only have enough courage and strength to do what you consider to be right. Maybe it turns out that was wrong, but still you would have done his, and it is most important.

It's freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm?" "Indignation," said Michelangelo. "Best fuel I know. Never burns out.

Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.

The paintings that laughed at him merrily from the walls were like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of. Gone were the flat, thin surfaces. Gone was the sentimental sobriety. Gone was the brown gravy in which Europe had been bathing its pictures for centuries. Here were pictures riotously mad with the sun. With light and air and throbbing vivacity. Paintings of ballet girls backstage, done in primitive reds, greens, and blues thrown next to each other irreverantly. He looked at the signature. Degas.

I cannot draw a human figure if I don't know the order of his bones, muscles or tendons. Same is that I cannot draw a human face if I don't know what's going on his mind and heart. In order to paint life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and think about the world they live in. The painter who knows his own craft and nothing else will turn out to be a very superficial artist.

Listen, my friend, all forms that exist in God's universe can be found in the human figure. A man's body and face can tell everything he represents. So how could I ever exhaust my interest in it?

Drawing is the poet's written line, set down to see if there be a story worth telling, a truth worth revealing.

I will be an artist. I am sure I will. [Vincent Van Gogh]

Loneliness is a kind of prison. [Vincent Van Gogh]

It's so easy to love. The only hard thing is to be loved. [Vincent Van Gogh]

Sometimes men are generous and forgiving, sometimes angry and blind.

Nature always resists the artist at the beginning.

Life's not so bad after all. There are not only poison but also antidotes.

You cannot be the good all the time "? sometimes it is necessary to get angry. [Vincent Van Gogh]

There's no love without pain.

Normal people do not create art.

How can a young person learn whether he chose the correct way? He thinks he has a special idea, and then he discovers that he is completely inappropriate for it.

His mind was like a soup dish, wide and shallow; it could hold a small amount of nearly anything, but the slightest jarring spilled the soup into somebody's lap

Fortune is beastly - it is only suitable for cows and businessmen.

From out of pain, beauty.

The brooding is better than the joy because even if the heart fills with happiness, it still mourns.

What we know of others is our personal secret.

An artist would not rise above the mediocrity if he condemns it.

All artists are crackpots. And it's their finest feature.

Every human life had its pattern that had to be worked out slowly to its ultimate conclusion.

... a canvas that I have covered is worth more than a blank canvas. My pretensions go no further; that is my right to paint, my reason for painting.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food...

God did not create us to abandon us.

...that horrible moment of suspense when the artist shows one of his creations to strange eyes for the first time.

Savoir souffrir sans se plaindre, ça c'est la seule chose pratique, c'est la grande science, la leçon à apprendre, la solution du problème de la vie.[Knowing how to suffer without complaining is the only practical thing, it's the great science, the lesson to learn, the solution to the problem of life.]

No artist is normal. Who happen to be normal cannot be an artist.

If it is noticed that much of my outside work concerns itelf with libraries, there is an extremely good reason for this. I think that the better part of my education, almost as important as that secured in the schools and the universities, came from libraries.

Religion will never show the way.

When I have trouble writing, I step outside my studio into the garden and pull weeds until my mind clears--I find weeding to be the best therapy there is for writer's block.

Misery is the only thing in the world that has no end or edge.

Do not call yourself old. A man is as old as the creative force within him.