“Love is so easily bruised by the necessity of making choices.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“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, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“Amar es ponerse al cuello el nudo corredizo de la ilusión; adorar a alguien mientras pareces asfixiarte. Pero incluso el amor no correspondido, el amor fugaz, es mejor que nada.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“What could she possibly have done that was so heinous as to earn her a lifetime of self-mortification? No one short of a tyrant deserved such unremitting agony. I cried there with her, for her, for Eve, for sorrows past, for sorrows yet to come. I put my pencil away. It was wrong to draw live pain. If there had been an artist at Bethany, it would have been wrong to intrude his chalk or charcoal on Mary Magdalene’s weeping as she washed Jesus’ feet. Some things were too raw for art until time dulled their sharpness.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“Sì. Ma la bellezza non è tutto. E' meglio essere assetati di bellezza e comprenderla, che essere belli e basta. Alla fine la vita risulta più ricca. Un giorno forse lo imparerà.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“If a person loves something above all else, if he values the work of his heart and hands, then he should naturally, without hesitation, pour into it his whole soul, undivided and pure. Great art demands nothing less.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“Just think. We’re whizzing through the universe.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“In this universe where I knew now we were not the center, where I was as insignificant and unremarkable as a grain of salt seen from a tower, God still allowed me to take my next breath.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“Which one is really my child? The one I brought forth with my own groans who has no liking for the thing I love most in all the world, or the stranger’s child whom fate placed in my life, the one who is absorbing and treasuring every word I give her, whose eyes are learning every day, whom I would love to teach...”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“I know. But it’s got to be this way, that she isn’t sure, so people looking at it a long time from now, women and men too, might feel badly, might even weep that at some ignorant time there was once a woman raped who was pressured, even expected, to kill herself.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“Things will change, Father. They must. And art can help create the change.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“I leaned out the window to feel the night’s deep blue, the same dark air that surrounded him in Genoa or Paris or wherever he was. I would give a great deal to know what he was thinking right at this moment. If a person could know for certain what the other person was thinking or doing, then loneliness might cease to exist in the world.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“A moon of startling brightness rose over the rooftops, lifted on a divine, invisible thread...”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“At some times in our lives, our passion makes us perpetrators of hurt and loss. At other times we are the ones who are hurt—all in the name of art. Sometimes we get what we want. Sometimes we pay for another to get what he or she wants.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“Look and look and don’t ever forget. Now, close your eyes. Here, give me your hand. And just feel. Can you feel the Earth move?”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“Palmira. She’s like an apparition floating unknowingly into her future,' I said. 'Here for too brief a time.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“That’s what great art is supposed to do—help us to live in the spirit and die at peace.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“It’s better to have a hunger and appreciation for beauty than to be merely beautiful. In the end, life is richer that way. She may learn that.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“Should I explain to him Galileo’s discovery that we are not what we thought—that our lives are made smaller by the unimportance of our dwelling place on the periphery, like a touch of color at the edge of a painting, contributing to the whole but unnoticed by most?”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“But even one-way love, fleeting love, is better than no love at all. I’m grateful for having had the feeling.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“Before this I had always held back, had never lived freely, not with Pietro, not even with Palmira, but here, where nothing was known, I did not fear judgment, and because Father and I shared the same sensibilities, all the rigidness of my living melted and I felt myself coming into myself. If it was genuine, if it would last, it was a wonderful feeling.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
Susan Vreeland
Born place: in Racine, WI, The United States
Born date January 20, 1946
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“I think you're going to break more hearts this spring than I'll be able to count."
"It isn't your job to count them," he said, his voice quiet and hard.
"No, it isn't, is it?" She looked over at him and smile wryly. "But I'm going to end up doing it all the same, won't I?"
"And why is that?"
She didn't seem to have an answer to that, and then, just when he was sure she would say no more, she whispered, "Because I won't be able to stop myself.”
― Julia Quinn, quote from When He Was Wicked
“5. Fifth Six Regret vanishes. Lose or gain, Stop worrying. Going forward: good fortune. Nothing is unfavorable. Win or lose, stop worrying. To proceed will afford ground for congratulation.”
― quote from The I Ching or Book of Changes
“For some reason Canon Fenneau made me feel a little uneasy. His voice might be soft, it was also coercive. He had small eyes, a large loose mouth, the lips thick, a somewhat receding chin. The eyes were the main feature. They were unusual eyes, not only almost unnaturally small, but vague, moist, dreamy, the eyes of a medium. His cherubic side, increased by a long slightly uptilted nose, was a little too good to be true, with eyes like that. In the manner in which he gave you all his attention there was a taste for mastery.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 4th Movement
“You’re just the romantic age,” she continued- “fifty. Twenty-five is too worldly wise; thirty is apt to be pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is- oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the mellow age. I love fifty.” - Hildegarde”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, quote from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
“Where am I going? I don't quite know.
Down to the stream where the king-cups grow-
Up on a hill where the pine-trees blow-
Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.
Where am I going? The clouds sail by,
Little ones, baby ones, over the sky.
Where am I going? The shadows pass,
Little ones, baby ones, over the grass.
If you were a cloud, and sailed up there,
You'd sail on the water as blue as air.
And you'd see me here in the fields and say:
"Doesn't the sky look green today?"
Where am I going? The high rooks call:
"It's awful fun to be born at all.
Where am I going? The ring-doves coo:
"We do have beautiful things to do."
If you were a bird, and lived on high,
You'd lean on the wind when the wind
came by,
You'd say to the wind when it took you away:
"That's where I wanted to go today!"
Where am I going? I don't quite know.
What does it matter where people go?
Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow-
Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.”
― A.A. Milne, quote from When We Were Very Young
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