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"I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life, the power to create."
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"You've got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it's a novel, they know someone's made it up and they know it's not real, if you make a small mistake they will cease to imaginatively engage with the story."

"I decided to coin the term 'cosy crime noir' for Brighton Belle. That is 'cosy crime' for today's sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it."

"What makes people tick? Life can be a trap of ennui, but imagery may be a redemptive escape from dullness. The iconic power and exuberance of images generate an inexorable addiction that needs to be gratified without respite. Here and now! ['Give me more images']"

"Authors always carry a means for scribbling and an excuse for pausing, often inopportunely, to record those fleeting sparks of creative fancy that might otherwise vanish like a wisp in the wind if ignored. Writing is a jealous and needy lover."

"Some people have a handful of ideas, but not enough time to realize them."

"I spent an hour looking at pots and carpets in the museums the other day, until the desire to describe them became like the desire for the lusts of the flesh."

"Do you know I get such a passion for reading sometimes its like the other passion -writing- only the wrong side of the carpet."

"As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall."

"Genius in truth means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."

"When ideas evaporate, when shapes fade and forms lose their integrity, our imagination can create an outlandish setting and convert everything into a hazy, misty Turner landscape. ['Back garden of a dream']"
Explore more quotes by Vincent van Gogh


"I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream."


"And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors, - a few men that I discovered by accident - I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them."


"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it."


"When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars."


"Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, 'What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.' Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope."


"So what do you want? Does what happens inside show on the outside? There is such a great fire in one's soul, and yet nobody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way."
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