Pure Colour Quotes

“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

“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

“Both making life and making art are pouring spirit into form.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“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

“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

“She doesn’t know why she spent so much of her life thinking about such trivial things, or looking at websites, when just outside her window there was a sky that was not trivial.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“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

“She picked it up, and the seashell seemed to speak to her, saying, You will have so many more years of living, and the years will draw you far from this time when you feel so bad, and time will crust over everything, and so much more will happen to you, and though the present is all you have right now, it will all be far in the past one day, something from another time, like everything I have moved beyond, as an ancient seashell, I don’t remember my youth, do you think that I do?—and the things I did when I was shiny and new, now I’m an old shell, like you will one day be, so take me with you as a reminder that this present moment will one day be gone, and its troubles buried beneath so many layers of living.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“What do humans go to art for, but to locate within themselves that inward-turning eye, which breathes significance into all of existence-for what is art but the act of infusing matter with the breath of God?”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“It is the flowers in the soul of the person who put them there that make us happy and enliven our hearts. The beauty of the flowers is a clue to the beauty of a human heart. They are a keyhole into a human heart.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“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

“She passed weeks in bed, hours and hours, just playing the jewel game on her phone. The game was easy and beautiful and she felt she was very good at it. Every time she played, she would think "After this game, you will put down your phone and do something else." But she never put down her phone, and she never did something else. She continued to play the jewel game. She thought, "It's okay, don't worry. You won't play the jewel game forever." But, what if she did play the jewel game forever? She thought about her life as she arranged jewels upon jewels. She thought about her life very slowly. She felt her brain get slow, clear, and focused. Organizing jewels took care of the nervous part of her brain and replaced it with a pleasant sensation of having done a good job cleaning jewels. She felt like she was creating order in the universe as the jewels disappeared. As she was clearing away jewels, she wondered "Isn't it time yet to become part of the world?" What world? After all, the world was also right where she was living. Her bed was as much the world as anything outside it. The world included her phone, her bed, these jewels. The world included her doing this. How could she ever become more a part of it? So she cleaned away the jewels, assured there was nowhere she had to go.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“Why did it seem like the only way to live-was to disobey?”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“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

“That was one thing about life we had to believe in, and that was transformation.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“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

“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

“For art is not made for living bodies—it is made for the cold, eternal soul.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“She was alone so she could hear herself thinking. She was alone so she could hear herself living.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“People should care for other people because they are familiar—because they’re also humans—not because they’re family.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“It was a reminder of what a human self was, and what a human life was: not a beautiful glass lamp just this side of being broken, or a lovely gold ring with a single dent in it. But a bettered old seashell, formed over millions of years, made to endure.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“In death, he had given her what remained of his life, and this was the most beautiful thing.

Perhaps we can only give in total beauty and simplicity in the moment of our dying, because that is the only giving that demands no return.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“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

“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

“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 itself into into a different room, and trapped you in it without them.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“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

“In the cosmic landscape, plants have front-row seats. God is thrilled to have an audience of creation made up mostly of plant life: trees and bushes, flowers and berries, sitting down to enjoy the show, and saying at intermission, What a romp!”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“Mira knew that humans made art because we were made in God’s image—which doesn’t mean we look like God; it means we like doing the same thing God likes. Both making life and making art are pouring spirit into form.”
― Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

“She felt so alone in those days. Not that she minded. 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