Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy

"He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself?"

"Bleed me of art, and there won't be enough liquid left in me to spit! [Michelangelo Buonorotti]"

"From this vantage point he came to a realization that everything that had happened to him before this had been a journey upward through time, everything that occurred after it a descent. If he could not control his fate, why be born?"

"A new doctor had been sent for, Lazzaro of Pavia, who had administered to Lorenzo a pulverized mixture of diamonds and pearls. This hitherto infallible medicine had failed to help."

"It's freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm"Indignation," said Michelangelo. "Best fuel I know. Never burns out."

"An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours."