"This is a set of six volumes and it’s expensive — but worth it for life. Van Gogh’s letters, along with the letters of Cezanne, are always inspirational to read. His pursuit of reality is thrilling, his lack of confidence, fears, doubts, excitement, his passion for nature and intensity when he talks about color, and the future of art drive you and help you accept your follies as an artist. And he did it all in such a short period of time."

"I’d have to cut the pages out of The Habit of Being (O’Connor’s collected letters) and sneak them in among the pages of The Complete Stories. She’s the goddess, right? And I’d need both books."

"I watch everything she does. I read everything she writes. My favorite artist walking the planet. Watch her Notes from the Field on HBO. Pick up her inspiring letters to a young artist immediately afterward. She never disappoints."

"The best book I’ve ever received as a gift was actually the best gift I ever received from my mother, too. When I was young, she gave me “Letters: Summer 1926,” about the three-way correspondence between Rainer Maria Rilke, Marina Tsvetayeva and Boris Pasternak. Three brilliant minds that had never met, all writing sonnets and passionate letters to each other for four years, eventually falling in love with each other through this correspondence. Seeing this love triangle unfold through actual letters was very exciting for me as a young girl. Later in life, I met Susan Sontag, and she told me she wanted to give me a new edition of a book for which she had recently written the foreword. You can understand my surprise when I discovered it was this very same book. She was always giving me books over the course of our friendship, but this one is the most precious to me, especially since she is no longer with us"