“Perhaps you could not find such godless, such ruthless and such materialist people as clergy.”

“Normal people do not create art.”

“'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.”

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

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

“As he went about to the other workrooms he realised that every painting was a self-portrait even when it was a still life or a scene over the roofs of Paris; for no man ever pictured anything but himself, his core, the things that he was basically. With every brush stroke the artist was mercilessly exposed: he could not conceal nothing, he could pretend to be another person, to believe in other values, but in the end he would fool no one.”

“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.”