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.

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.

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

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

Nature always resists the artist at the beginning.

To be an artist is first to be a manual laborer.

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