The light fell upon the pages of his coloring book, across his child’s hands. Coloring excited him, not the act of filling in space, but choosing colors that no one else would select. In the green of the hills he saw red. Purple snow, green skin, silver sun. He liked the effect it had on others, that it disturbed his siblings. He discovered he had a talent for sketching. He was a natural draftsman and secretly he twisted and abstracted his images, feeling his growing powers. He was an artist, and he knew it. It was not a childish notion. He merely acknowledged what was his.
— Just Kids (Patti Smith), Loc. 159–63
That’s me! My colouring book! When I was very little, I’ve been making cars’ wheels of various colours, and my dad told me that’s impossible, for a car to have wheels of these colours. ‘They’re all black,’ he said.
Perhaps, I stopped doing that, but he disappointed me greatly.