'One drunken night, a superb painter let me take a brush to a canvas that she said she was abandoning. I tried to continue a simple black stroke that she had started. The contrast between the controlled pressure of her touch and my flaccid smear shocked me, physically. It was like shaking hands with a small person who flips you across a room.'

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/23/the-art-of-dying-peter-schjeldahl