Irving Stone Van Gogh Quotes & Sayings

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

'Tell me, please,' Van Gogh asked, 'is it justifiable that a person wastes his only life by selling worthless paintings for fools? — Irving Stone

[Vincent Van Gogh] 'Oh Theo, don't you think I'm the black sheep, do you?'
[Theo Van Gogh] 'I'm more inclined to consider you as an ass.' — Irving Stone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watercolor is not my way of expression.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

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. — Irving Stone

An impressionist is the one who does not paint like everyone, does not obey the rules and attitude.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

Wherever at least two art lovers meet, Vincent Van Gogh's name is holy. — Irving Stone

I can not draw sheep and cows if I do not understand their lives.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

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

After all, the life itself shows a completely useless, hopeless and indifferent blank face, a deduction of no more than a blank canvas.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — 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

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

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

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. — Irving Stone