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

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

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

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

Nature always resists the artist at the beginning.

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

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.