How Should a Person Be?

After someone recommended me this book, How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti (Anansi, 2010), I decided to check it out at the library.. After reading the first chapter I have ordered it for myself.

Quotes that pulled me in:

           "Then that night, around the fire burning in a pit, she and Eli spent several hours talking about colour and brush stroke and line. They went on to email for several months, and she was briefly converted into the sort of painter he was-- a painter who respected painting in itself. But after two months, her art crush dematerialized.
          'He's just another man who wants to teach me something,' she said." (p 15)

And:

         "'It's like with improv,' Misha said. 'True improv is about surprising yourself--but most people won't improvise truthfully. They're afraid. What they do is pull from their bag of tricks. They take what they already know how to do and apply it to the present situation. But that's cheating! And cheating's bad for an artist. It's bad for life--but it's really bad in art.'" (p 17)


Can't wait to read the rest of this. I also really love the pineapples in the inside cover.