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

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.

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

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.

What we know of others is our personal secret.

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

There's no love without pain.