Irving Stone Quotes

I think the great artists (..) have always thought with the heart.

The real actor - like any real artistj- has a direct line to the collective heart.

Writing really evokes empathy in a way very few things can do.

One of the reasons I took up acting was to learn to be more human, to get in touch with human emotions.

As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.

To be thoroughly conversant with Man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of Despair

the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.

I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.

I think you need to have lived more to truly know a man's heart. You need to have made more transactions in life to know the worth of the coin you spend so freely

An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can't feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn't capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won't put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn't a great artist.

The only question that nobody ever asks is: What breaks your heart? I think that should be asked of all "artists."... So, what breaks your heart?

No person can ever know everything that is in the heart of another. We are all Face Dancers in our souls.

George Bernard Shaw said that thinking was the greatest of all human endeavors, but I would say that feeling was. Allowing yourself to feel things, to feel love or wrath, hatred, rage.

I feel guilty when people say I'm the greatest on the scene. What's good or bad doesn't matter to me; what does matter is feeling and not feeling. If only people would take more of a true view and think in terms of feelings. Your name doesn't mean a damn, it's your talents and feelings that matter. You've got to know much more than just the technicalities of notes; you've got to know what goes between the notes.

Kenneth Hari is a true artist and in my opinion a psychic. When he is painting you, he feels your heart and soul.

I know that I've had a very fortunate life, but also I think my job as an actor is to connect emotionally to human beings.

You know how they say we only use 10 percent of our brains? I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts.

People are very uncomfortable when you call actors artists because there are a lot of actors out there that aren't artists - there are a lot of actors that are hired for very specific reasons that are shallow and have to do with sexual currency and what the industry thinks sells. Real actors are artists, they're expressionists.

Stories always have held conflicts and contrasts, highs and lows, life and death situations. And there can be much suffering in stories, but now we say the artist doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand the human condition, understand the suffering.

Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.

This business of really knowing people, deep down, including your own self, it is not something you can learn in school or from a book. It takes your whole being to do it—your eyes and your ears, your brain and your heart. Maybe your heart most of all. —Bobby Goodspeed

Do you know, André, I sometimes think that you have no heart.' 'Presumably because I sometimes betray intelligence.

I think novels just really show us the deepest parts of people's hearts, and you cannot walk away anymore and say, "I don't know."

What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.