"Now don't think that I've lost my mind — but I'll tell you, I'll look at some of the cards I have, some of Van Gogh's pictures of the poor, the coal miners, or Daumier's, and I talk to those pictures! I look, and I speak. I get strength from the way those writers and artists portrayed the poor, that's how I've kept going all these years. I pray to God and go visit him in churches; and I have my conversational time with Van Gogh or with Dickens — I mean, I'll look at a painting reproduced on a postcard, that I use as a bookmark, or I read one of those underlined pages in one of my old books, and Lord, I've got my strength to get through the morning or afternoon! When I die, I hope people will say that I tried to be mindful of what Jesus told us — his wonderful stories — and I tried my best to live up to his example (we fall flat on our faces all the time, though!) and I tried to take those artists and novelists to heart, and live up to their wisdom (a lot of it came from Jesus, as you probably know, because Dickens and Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy kept thinking of Jesus themselves all through their lives).