Divya’s Reviews > My Friends > Status Update

Art is a fragile magic, just like love, and that’s humanity’s only defence against death. That we create and paint and dance and fall in love, that’s our rebellion against eternity. Everything beautiful is a shield. Vincent Van Gogh wrote: ‘I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.’

Children aren’t responsible for their parents’ happiness, but they still try.

You can be whatever you want to in life, as long as you don’t become a critic! Not of other people, and not of yourself. It’s easy to be a critic, any coward can do that. But art doesn’t need critics, art has enough enemies already. Art needs friends.

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.

The artist’s bookcases were full of poets, like the bookcases of anyone trying to find out how everyone else copes.

Death is public but dying is private, the very last private thing we have.

Joar just wanted him to finish it, and the problem was that Joar thought you needed to start if you were ever going to finish, but that wasn’t how it worked. Art isn’t chronological. Everything the artist drew came from a place in his head that he could only get to if he wasn’t looking for it. If he was told to draw, it was like waking from a dream and trying to dream it again.

Nothing weighs more than someone else’s belief in you.

He’s dreamed of being able to day: “being human is to grieve, constantly.” Because what he really wants to know is: “How the hell do all the rest of you cope?”

Life is long, Louisa. Everyone will tell you that it’s short, they’re lying. It’s a long, long life.