A brooding man, to judge by his poems and paintings, Kung Hsein was by nature a loner and an exocentric who had difficulty in getting along with people. Choosing reclusion as a way of life, […] he complained, “Even in old age I have to struggle to live.”

— Wen C. Fong, Images of the Mind, Princeton University, Ch. The Great Synthesis, p. 193, 1984