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Susan Vreeland Quotes

You know, bicycling isn't just a matter of balance, I said. it's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I'm going to call that the

You know, bicycling isn't just a matter of balance," I said. "it's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I'm going to call that the Bicyclist's Philosophy of Life.

Susan Vreeland
Philosophy, Moving, Eye

What the world calls failure, I call learning.

Susan Vreeland
World

Look long enough, out or in, and you’ll be glad you are who you are.

Susan Vreeland
Long, Looks, Enough

If two people love the same thing, she reasoned, then they must love each other, at least a little, even if they never say it.

Susan Vreeland
Two, People, Littles
Susan Vreeland (2000). “Girl in Hyacinth Blue”

That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.

Susan Vreeland
Heart, Humble, Hands

He and I had a bridge that no one else traveled that made us artistic lovers, passionate without a touch of the flesh. He made me thrive, and valuing that, I could do nothing that would endanger it.

Susan Vreeland
Bridges, Passionate, Flesh
Susan Vreeland (2011). “Clara and Mr. Tiffany: A Novel”, p.226, Random House

It was strange: When you reduced even a fledgling love affair to its essentials--I loved her, she maybe loved me, I was foolish, I suffered--it became vacuous and trite, meaningless to anyone else. In the end, it's only the moments that we have, the kiss on the palm, the joint wonder at the furrowed texture of a fir trunk or at the infinitude of grains of sand in a dune. Only the moments.

Susan Vreeland
Kissing, Joints, Essentials

God taking from us and loving us at the same time by providing comforters was a kind of spiritual equanimity. It seemed a phenomenon of life how a death insinuates us into the debt of those who stand by us in trouble and console us.

Susan Vreeland
Spiritual, Loving Life, Debt
Susan Vreeland (2011). “Clara and Mr. Tiffany: A Novel”, p.89, Random House

Everybody works . . . . That's what life is. Work and a little play and a lot of prayer.

Susan Vreeland
Prayer, Play, Littles
Susan Vreeland (2012). “Girl in Hyacinth Blue”, p.35, RosettaBooks

Think hard before you begin, then enter the work.

Susan Vreeland
Thinking, Hard
Susan Vreeland (2004). “The Forest Lover”, p.172, Penguin

I remember being disappointed when Papa had shown me Caravaggio's Judith. She was completely passive while she was sawing through a man's neck. Caravaggio gave all the feeling to the man. Apparently, he couldn't imagine a woman to have a single thought. I wanted to paint her thoughts, if such a thing were possible - determination and concentration and belief in the absolute necessity of the act. The fate of her people resting on her shoulders.

Susan Vreeland
Determination, Fate, Men

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