Irving Stone, 1903 - 1989
Born: 14 July 1903, San Francisco, California
Died: 26 August 1989, Los Angeles, California
Born Irving Tannenbaum, his parents divorced in 1910 and Irving later took his stepfather's name. His mother wanted him to study medicine, but he changed course at the University of California at Berkeley and majored in political science, supporting himself by playing saxophone in a dance band and graduating in 1923. He held a teaching fellowship at the University of Southern California and earned master's degree in economics, then took another fellowship at Berkeley to get his doctorate but left in 1926 without writing a thesis, USC gave him an honorary doctorate in 1960. He decided to become a playwright and moved to Paris where he wrote seventeen plays in a year without selling any, then was overwhelmed at a Van Gogh exhibit that he decided he had to write a book about the artist. He moved to New York and wrote mysteries to fund a return to Europe for research for Lust for Life in 1934. Jean Factor had helped with the editing, they married and she helped research the rest of his books as well as edited them. He sought out important figures who had been misunderstood, researched their lives in detail, and wrote their lives, mostly as novels. He said that the books were 98% researched facts, the dialog was his creation. His subjects included Andrew and Rachel Jackson, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Clarence Darrow, John and Abigail Adams, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud. His magnum opus was The Agony and the Ecstasy, the 1961 epic and 1965 film of the working relationship of Michaelangelo and Pope Julius II. When not in the field doing research the Stones lived at Beverly Hills, he died of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Biography from Wikipedia and New York Times obituary
Irving Stone quotes:
Quotes found : 38 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 3) 1 2 3 Next
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- An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours. permalink
Irving Stone - The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) - Art is a staple, like bread or wine or a warm coat in winter. Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food. permalink
Irving Stone - Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones. permalink
Irving Stone - Lust for Life (1934) - Drawing is the poet's written line, set down to see if there be a story worth telling, a truth worth revealing. permalink
Irving Stone - The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) - Each of us has his own alphabet with which to create poetry. permalink
Irving Stone - First, we think all truth beautiful, no matter how hideous its face may seem. We accept all of nature, without any repudiation. We believe there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris. We think pain good, because it is the most profound of all human feelings. We think sex beautiful, even when portrayed by a harlot and a pimp. We put character above ugliness, pain above prettiness, and hard, crude reality above all the wealth in France. We accept life in its entirety, without making moral judgments. We think the prostitute as good as the countess, the concierge as good as the general, the peasant as good as the cabinet minister, for they all fit into the pattern of nature, and are woven into the design of life! permalink
Irving Stone - Lust for Life (1934) - He had always loved God. In his darkest hours he cried out, "God did not create us to abandon us." permalink
Irving Stone - The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) - He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death. permalink
Irving Stone - The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) - He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic. permalink
Irving Stone - The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) - He sat before the mirror of the second-floor bedroom stretching his lean cheeks with their high bone ridges, the flat broad forehead, and ears too far back on the head, the dark hair curling forward in thatches, the amber-colored eyes wide-set but heavy-lidded. permalink
Irving Stone - First lines of The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) - I knew that I had to find out more about van Gogh. Even though I was far too young, and felt I did not have sufficient technique to write a book about Vincent van Gogh, I knew I had to try. If I didn't I would never write anything else. permalink
Irving Stone - 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. permalink
Irving Stone - I'm never less alone than when alone. permalink
Irving Stone - The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) - If it is noticed that much of my outside work concerns itelf with libraries, there is an extremely good reason for this. I think that the better part of my education, almost as important as that secured in the schools and the universities, came from libraries. permalink
Irving Stone - In order to paint life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and thing about the world they live in. The painter who knows his own craft and nothing else will turn out to be a very superficial artist. permalink
Irving Stone - Lust for Life (1934)
Quotes found : 38 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 3) 1 2 3 Next
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