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Pure Colour QUOTES

Pure Colour QUOTES

1 " The more she thinks about the sort of maroonish light in his room those nights, and the light of the candel flickering, she knows that the colour of that room is how they all felt, and that colour is not just a representation of the world, but of the feelings in a room, and the meaningfulness of a room in time, because in that colour, her father died. She had never seen that colour before. It was the colour of a father dying. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

2 " She had not understood that the spirit that animated the body of her father animated the body of everything. Trees and the sky were not a backdrop to life, but they were equally life.

She thought, I am the daughter of everything. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

3 " So many gifts her father gave her, so she should not be surprised they continued to be given, even in the moment of his dying.

...The gifts of patience, perspective, and detachment.

The gifts of silence, irrelevance, and joy. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

4 " Life rushed at her after her father died, as if to remind her that there can be no less life, that there can be no deprivation of life, that life is an endless and eternal living, even if your father is dead. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

5 " It is only when you get older that everyone makes you feel bad about being alone, or implies that spending time with other people is somehow better, because it proves you to be likeable.

But being unlikeable wasn't the reason she was alone. She was alone so she could hear herself thinking. She was alone so she could hear herself living. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

6 " Both making life and making art are pouring spirit into form. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

7 " But you will be back, and you will always be here. Don’t think that in death you go far from the earth; you remain down here with everything—the part of you that loved, which is the most important part. That part of you will patiently be here as the earth changes colour, exhausts itself, breathes in fresh life again, and revives. That part of you will be here all along, through that whole entire time, while the slugs make their sluggish art, beautiful little swirls in the mud, and whatever will populate the sea, and the greatest beasts that will ever be; slippery with green gills and lots of scales, feathers and fur. Even the swimming creatures will have their own ways of moving which will be radically new. And you will be here for that, too! Why am I so stuck in the art of the past? Because you are stuck in this situation, thinking it is the only one. There will be a second draft, and the part of you that loves, which is the best part of you, and the most eternal part, will be in the bears, the lizards, the mammoths, and the birds, there in the second draft of life. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

8 " She was alone so she could hear herself thinking. She was alone so she could hear herself living. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

9 " She had thought that when someone died, it would be like they went into a different room. She had not known that life itself transformed into a different room and trapped you in it without them. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

10 " What is the part that makes us want to love someone who doesn't love us back?

Don't focus on that.

What should I focus on, then?

THat the probability of any person being around is one in a trillion, so it's almost a zero percent chance of you being here. But you're going to have, you know, eight billion people, and those eight billion people have won the lottery. And the worst part is that nobody realizes that! They don't realize what a rare opportunity they have to observe this universe, because here's this amazing universe, and if humans hadn't evolved to this stage, they wouldn't know they were living in this beautiful place. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

11 " God is most proud of creation as an aesthetic thing. You have only to look at the exquisite harmony of sky and trees and moon and stars to see what a good job God did, aesthetically. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

12 " But being unlikeable wasn’t the reason she was alone. She was alone so she could hear herself thinking. She was alone so she could hear herself living. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

13 " It wasn't that Mira had met her in some previous life. It was that she was meeting her in this one-and isn't that rare! Why is it so hard to meet in this life? But the deeper question was: What was one supposed to do with such people? Fuck them, love them, or leave them alone? Yet they seemed to call out to be acted upon. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

14 " She wanted a love that would cool her down, to the temperature of the living. She longed to be held by the coldest hands. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

15 " and how faithful; how faithful a book was, and how strong, a place you could be safe, apart from the world, held inside a world that would never grow weak, and which could pass through wars, massacres and floods-could pass through all of human history, and the integrity of its soul would stay strong. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

16 " The last thing that's needed is to judge your own heart, but then that's the first thing you go and do. A heart rushes to judge itself. A heart should have better things to do. A heart doesn't. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

17 " Stripped of the glamour and beauty of youth, everything we ever did-it all looks different now. We can see our choices as acts in themselves, not stages on life's way, for if progress in human history is an illusion, so is progress in a human life. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

18 " For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

19 " People complained of being tired, exhaustion, not realizing that this was put in them so they wouldn't do as many things. Such people railed against their fatigue-the ones who were determined to fix things. In order to stop them, the gods tired them out. The weariest people are being the most prevented. They are the most dangerous ones, who would change the world if they could. We know which people are threatening to the gods by how exhausted they feel all the time. Those who would not make as many fixes are not given as much fatigue. You know the gods consider you dangerous if you are tired all the time. "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour

20 " Why did it seem like the only way to live-was to disobey? "

― Sheila Heti , Pure Colour