Susan Vreeland Quotes

• You know, bicycling isn't just a matter of balance," I said. "it's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I'm going to call that the Bicyclist's Philosophy of Life.

  Susan Vreeland

  Philosophy, Moving, Eye

  47 Copy quote

• What the world calls failure, I call learning.

  Susan Vreeland

  World

  7 Copy quote

• Look long enough, out or in, and you’ll be glad you are who you are.

  Susan Vreeland

  Long, Looks, Enough

  8 Copy quote

• If two people love the same thing, she reasoned, then they must love each other, at least a little, even if they never say it.

  Susan Vreeland

  Two, People, Littles

  Susan Vreeland (2000). “Girl in Hyacinth Blue”

  7 Copy quote

• That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.

  Susan Vreeland

  Heart, Humble, Hands

  23 Copy quote

• He and I had a bridge that no one else traveled that made us artistic lovers, passionate without a touch of the flesh. He made me thrive, and valuing that, I could do nothing that would endanger it.

  Susan Vreeland

  Bridges, Passionate, Flesh

  Susan Vreeland (2011). “Clara and Mr. Tiffany: A Novel”, p.226, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• It was strange: When you reduced even a fledgling love affair to its essentials--I loved her, she maybe loved me, I was foolish, I suffered--it became vacuous and trite, meaningless to anyone else. In the end, it's only the moments that we have, the kiss on the palm, the joint wonder at the furrowed texture of a fir trunk or at the infinitude of grains of sand in a dune. Only the moments.

  Susan Vreeland

  Kissing, Joints, Essentials

  6 Copy quote

• God taking from us and loving us at the same time by providing comforters was a kind of spiritual equanimity. It seemed a phenomenon of life how a death insinuates us into the debt of those who stand by us in trouble and console us.

  Susan Vreeland

  Spiritual, Loving Life, Debt

  Susan Vreeland (2011). “Clara and Mr. Tiffany: A Novel”, p.89, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• Everybody works . . . . That's what life is. Work and a little play and a lot of prayer.

  Susan Vreeland

  Prayer, Play, Littles

  Susan Vreeland (2012). “Girl in Hyacinth Blue”, p.35, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

• Think hard before you begin, then enter the work.

  Susan Vreeland

  Thinking, Hard

  Susan Vreeland (2004). “The Forest Lover”, p.172, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Determination, Fate, Men

  4 Copy quote

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