Best 73 quotes of Irving Stone on MyQuotes

... 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

From out of pain, beauty.

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.

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

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.'

He who loves lives, he who lives works, and he who works has bread.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.]

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

There's no love without pain.