Irving Stone Quotes - Page 2

There are neither good nor evil, only the existence and action.

There's no love without pain.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

What we know of others is our personal secret.

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

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

Normal people do not create art.

After all, the world is still great.

An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

From out of pain, beauty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

We...believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.

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.