Irving Stone

“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?”

“The simplest things that need self-restraint are the most difficult to replicate.”

“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.”

“Weeks passed, Vincent did nothing - just ate, slept or sat staring at one point. [...] He wandered around the neighborhood in order to stretch his legs or just for pleasure. He walked because he was annoyed to lie, to sit or to stand. When he got tired of walking, he was sitting, lying or standing.”

“[...] 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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“'I saw the light of your room through the bottom of the door,' said vice-admiral, 'the watchman told me he had seen you in the yard four o'clock in the morning. How many hours per day do you work?''It depends. Sometimes eighteen, sometimes twenty.''Twenty!' Uncle Jan shook his head, his face became even more concerned. Vice-admiral could not believe that there would be such a thickhead in Van Gogh family.”

“Diligence does not work if there is a lack of innate talent.”

“God is imagined as a rich, old gentleman who is very happy that things are going so smooth here on Earth that he had created.”

“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.”

“'Tell me, please,' Van Gogh asked, 'is it justifiable that a person wastes his only life by selling worthless paintings for fools?”

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

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

“Guilty, Your Honor, but only of minor transgressions. My motto is, 'Let no girl, no gun, no cards, no violins, no dress, no tobacco, no laziness keep you from your books.”

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

“First, we think all truth is beautiful, no matter how hideous its face may seem. We accept all of nature, without any repudiation. We believe there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris. We think pain is good because it is the most profound of all human feelings. We think sex is beautiful even when portrayed by a harlot and a pimp. We put character above ugliness, pain above prettiness and hard, crude reality above all the wealth in France. We accept life in its entirety without making moral judgments. We think the prostitute is as good as the countess, the concierge as good as the general, the peasant as good as the cabinet minister, for they all fit into the pattern of nature and are woven into the design of life!”

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

“There seemed to be that same fierce quest after truth, the same unafraid penetration, the same feeling that character is beauty, no matter how sordid it may appear.”

“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.”

“They had painted in a grand rush to keep intact the purity of their first impression, the mood in which the motif had been conceived.”

“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.”

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

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

“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?”

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

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

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

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

“Naći će se drugi papa, ali nikad više neće biti Botičelija.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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