Quotes from Irving Stone

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

Nature always resists the artist at the beginning.

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

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

God did not create us to abandon us.

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

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

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

Religion will never show the way.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.