“...but you are too much for them: the weak in courage are strong in cunning; and one by one, you have absorbed and have captured and dishonored, and have distilled of your deliverers the most ruinous of all poisons; people hear Beethoven in concert halls, or over a bridge game, or to relax; Cézannes are hung on walls, reproduced, in natural wood frames; van Gogh is the man who cut off his ear and whose yellows became recently popular in window decoration.”

“Everyone said to Vincent van Gogh, "You can't be a great painter, you only have one ear." And you know what he said? "I can't hear you.”

“I have Van Gogh's ear for music”

“Wasn't he the one who sliced off his ear and mailed it to his girlfriend?""Van Gogh," said Varen, in a monotone that suggested he might be in pain."Van Gogh," Gwen said, leaning away, waving the apple. "Edgar Allan Poe. Close enough!”

“I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.”

“News flash: The whole thing is a huge mess and a giant nightmare and it’s all about to explode in your face and you have no idea whatyou’ve gotten yourself into. Love is no game. People cut their ears off over this stuff. People jump off the Eiffel Tower and sell all theirpossessions and move to Alaska to live with the grizzly bears, and then they get eaten and nobody hears them when they scream for help.That’s right. Falling in love is pretty much the same thing as being eaten alive by a grizzly bear.Believe me, I should know.”