Irving Stone Quotes & Sayings

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

It's pleasant to get used to the expensive, the soft, the comfortable. Once you're addicted, it's so easy to become a sycophant, to trim the sails of your judgment in order to be kept on. The next step is to change your work to please those in power, and that is death to the sculptor. — Irving Stone

A man who has not suffered has nothing to tell with his paintings. — Irving Stone

Have you ever been in love?"
"...in a way."
"It's always 'in a way. — Irving Stone

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

Diligence does not work if there is a lack of innate talent. — Irving Stone

You know, Nabby, there's mighty few pleasures in life to equal doing one's job. It is an act of love ... -p. 131 — Irving Stone

My books are based 98 percent on documentary evidence. — Irving Stone

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

There's nothing romantic about my work ... I don't believe in inspiration. I believe that you get to your desk, you stay there, you work, you think of nothing else. You write and you write, and in the end, you write something good. — Irving Stone

I paint only what I love.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

It's not macho to read? Nonsense. Reading is a stouthearted activity, disporting courage, keenness, stick-to-itness. It is also, in my experience, one of the most thrilling and enduring delights of life, equal to a home run, a slamdunk, or breaking the four-minute mile. — Irving Stone

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

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. — Irving Stone

Art destroys the life. — Irving Stone

There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books. — Irving Stone

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. — Irving Stone

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

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

Sometimes men are generous and forgiving, sometimes angry and blind. — Irving Stone

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. — Irving Stone

How could he have been so stupid, so blind? David pictured after Goliath could be no one but the biblical David, a special individual. He was not content to portray one man; he was seeking universal man, Everyman, all of whom,from the beginning of time,
had faced a decision to strike for freedom — Irving Stone

Lorenzo il Magnifico, the Plato Four, the humanists had taught him that man was the center of the universe; and this was never more demonstrable that when he stood looking upward and found himself, a lone individual, serving as the central pole holding up the tarpaulin of sun and clouds, moon and stars, knowing that, lone or abandoned as he might feel, without his support the heavens would fall. — Irving Stone

Life's not so bad after all. There are not only poison but also antidotes. — Irving Stone

No one has called any of my pictures obscene ever but I have been constantly blamed for an even greater sin - the ugliness.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

Time has a texture. Each period of waiting looms its own design. For Abigail, this one was shot through with golden threads. -Those Who Love, p. 130 — Irving Stone

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. — Irving Stone

It was like penetrating deep into white marble with the pounding live thrust of
his chisel beating upward through the warm living marble with one "Go!", his whole body behind the heavy hammer, penetrating through ever deeper and deeper furrows of soft yielding living substance until he had reached the explosive climax, and all of his
fluid strength, love, passion, desire had been poured into the nascent form, and the marble block, made to love the and of the true sculptor, and responded, giving of its inner heat
and substance and fluid form, until at last the sculptor and the marble had totally coalesced, so deeply penetrating and infusing each other that they had become one, marble and man and organic unity, each fulfilling the other in the greatest act of art and love known to the human species. — Irving Stone

Who loves - lives, who lives - works, and who works has some bread. — Irving Stone

When I was young, Monsieur," he said, "I used to think a lot about God. But He seems to have grown thinner with the years. He is still in that cornfield you painted, and in the sunset by Montmajour, but when I think about men ... and the world they have made ... " "I know, Roulin, but I feel more and more that we must not judge God by this world. It's just a study that didn't come off. What can you do in a study that has gone wrong, if you are fond of the artist? You do not find much to criticize; you hold your tongue. But you have a right to ask for something better." "Yes, that's it," exclaimed Roulin, "something just a tiny bit better." "We should have to see some other work by the same hand before we judge him. This world was evidently botched up in a hurry on one of his bad days, when the artist did not have his wits about him. — Irving Stone

What the world thought made little difference. Rembrandt had to
paint. Whether he painted well or badly didn't matter; painting was the
stuff that held him together as a man. The chief value of art, Vincent, lies
in the expression it gives to the artist. Rembrandt fulfilled what he knew
to be his life purpose; that justified him. Even if his work had been
worthless, he would have been a thousand times more successful than if
he had put down his desire and become the richest merchant in
Amsterdam. (Mendes Da Costa — Irving Stone

When I have trouble writing, I step outside my studio into the garden and pull weeds until my mind clears
I find weeding to be the best therapy there is for writer's block. — Irving Stone

Artists thrive on suffering. — Irving Stone

A new doctor had been sent for, Lazzaro of Pavia, who had administered to Lorenzo a pulverized mixture of diamonds and pearls. This hitherto infallible medicine had failed to help. — Irving Stone

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. — Irving Stone

If Delacroix discovered painting when he had neither teeth nor health, I can discover it when I have neither teeth nor the mind.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

You cannot be the good all the time - sometimes it is necessary to get angry.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

As he reached the door of the chapel and turned back for a last look, he saw that the Virgin too was sad and lonely; the most alone human being God ever put on earth. — Irving Stone

Inside yourself you're strong. That's the place where strength counts. Strength shows not only in how fast you can chop down trees.' -p. 5 — Irving Stone

After all, the world is still great. — Irving Stone

We are all are cripples in some way.
[Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec] — Irving Stone

Religion will never show the way. — Irving Stone

That horrible moment of suspense when the artist shows one of his creations to strange eyes for the first time. — Irving Stone

Cardinal Giovanni still did not like delicate matters; they were usually painful. — Irving Stone

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

I do like to teach. Sitting in my great chair at school, I used to consider myself as some dictator at the head of a commonwealth ... To fire a newborn soul with ardor for learning! At that time I thought the world could afford no greater pleasure.' - Those Who Love, p. 177 — Irving Stone

He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic.
— Irving Stone

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

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

Do you call yourself an artist?" "Yes." "How absurd. You never sold a picture in your life." "Is that what being an artist means - selling? I thought it meant one who was always seeking without absolutely finding. I thought it means the contrary from 'I know it, I have found it.' When I say I am an artist, I only mean — Irving Stone

Is an artist only the one whose paintings are purchased? I think that an artist is a man who always seeks and never finds a final answer.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

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

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

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

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

The maximum value of art is that it allows the artist to express himself. — 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? — Irving Stone

He was a victim of his own integrity, which forced him to do his best, even when he would have preferred to do nothing at all. — Irving Stone

God did not create us to abandon us. — Irving Stone

I was thinking that Rembrandt would have like to paint you. — Irving Stone

From this vantage point he came to a realization that everything that had happened to him before this had been a journey upward through time, everything that occurred after it a descent. If he could not control his fate, why be born? — Irving Stone

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 — Irving Stone

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

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. — Irving Stone

The writer ... an athlete required to break the four-minute mile every morning. — Irving Stone

Mother, where did you find the courage?' ... ' Courage, Johnny? I don't know. We just do blindly the thing we think is right ... What was it that moved me: love? Duty? Ambition? All three. Now I have my reward in full measure.' -p. Abigail to Johnny, Those Who Love, p. 564 — Irving Stone

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

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

Even if there is endless documentation, it would be impossible to know what a man thought inside his own mind ... This is where the novelist's creative imagination has to take over. — Irving Stone

What we know of others is our personal secret. — Irving Stone

You can only have the courage and strength to do what you think is right. It may turn out to be wrong, but you will at least have done it, and that is the important thing. We must act according to the best dictates of our reason, and then leave God to judge its ultimate value. — Irving Stone

It was only a remote portion of his mind that heard and answered the girl. The rest of him was soaking up her beauty with the passionate thirst of a man who has drunk too long at a celibate well. — Irving Stone

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

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

He ... breathed in
heavy gulps of air to prove to himself that he was three-dimensional. — Irving Stone

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

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. — Irving Stone

'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. — Irving Stone

Normal people do not create art. — Irving Stone

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

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. — Irving Stone

An artist does not have to think about what he is doing. — Irving Stone

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.' — Irving Stone

Oh, my job ... I sacrificed my whole life ... and almost lost my mind.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

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. — Irving Stone

The fields that push up the corn, and the water that rushes down the ravine, the juice of the grape, and the life of a man as it flows past him, are all one and the same thing. The sole unity in life is the unity of rhythm. A rhythm to which we all dance; men, apples, ravines, ploughed fields, carts among the corn, houses, horses, and the sun. The stuff that is in you, Gauguin, will pound through a grape tomorrow, because you and the grape are one. When I paint a peasant labouring in the field, I want people to feel the peasant flowing down into the soil, just as the corn does, and the soil flowing up into the peasant. I want them to feel the sun pouring into the peasant, into the field, the corn, the plough, and the horses, just as they all pour back into the sun. When you begin to feel the universal rhythm in which everything on earth moves, you begin to understand life ... . — Irving Stone

There's no love without pain. — Irving Stone

Every man must settle down once in a lifetime. — Irving Stone

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. — Irving Stone

Everyone has their own personality, its own character, and if he respects that, everything would finally fall over for good only. — Irving Stone

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. — Irving Stone

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. — Irving Stone

What meaning has a compliment if one hears it night and day. — Irving Stone

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

An empty stomach is better than full and grief is better than happiness. — Irving Stone

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. — Irving Stone

Vincent did not know how to express his feelings in words. He knew how to paint them.
However, one cannot paint the farewell. — Irving Stone

Actually, Paris wakes up when it comes time for aperitif. — Irving Stone

Art is amoral; so is life. — Irving Stone

From out of pain, beauty. — Irving Stone