Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that

“Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love.” — Marc Chagall

In these luminous words, Marc Chagall, the painter of dreams and color, unveils the core of his spirit — that love is not merely one theme among many, but the very axis around which life turns. For Chagall, art was not a mirror of reality, but a vision of the heart. He lived and created in the belief that all truth, all meaning, all beauty flows from love. When he said that “only love interests me,” he was not speaking from the sentimentality of youth, but from the deep conviction of a soul that had seen both wonder and suffering, yet chose always to dwell in tenderness. To Chagall, love was both subject and sustenance — the divine light that made the world bearable and holy.

Born into the harshness of a Russian village and exiled by the fires of war, Chagall witnessed the cruelty of men and the fragility of peace. Yet even amidst ruin, he painted lovers floating above burning cities, holding each other in impossible calm. Why? Because for him, love was the only eternal reality. The world may burn, empires may fall, but the embrace of two souls — that moment of recognition — remains untouched by time. When he said he was “in contact with things that revolve around love,” he meant that love, to him, was not only a feeling, but a cosmic order — the pulse of the universe, the hidden harmony beneath chaos.

His words echo the wisdom of the ancients. Plato once spoke of love as the force that draws the soul toward the divine, the yearning of the mortal for immortality. And Chagall, centuries later, painted that same yearning in color — angels and humans, heaven and earth, entwined. He saw that love is not a distraction from life’s purpose, but the very reason life exists. Every act of creation, whether in art, in kindness, or in faith, is an expression of love seeking form. Without it, the world is grey; with it, even suffering is transfigured into meaning.

Consider the story of Chagall himself and his beloved Bella, his muse and wife. She was the heart of his art, the living embodiment of his vision. Her death during the Second World War broke him, yet his brush did not fall silent. Instead, he continued to paint her — not as a ghost, but as a presence that hovered above his canvases, radiant and eternal. Through her, he proved his belief that love transcends mortality. In this way, Chagall lived his own words: even in grief, he remained “in contact with things that revolve around love.” He refused to yield to despair, and so his art became a hymn of remembrance — a testament that love, once awakened, can never truly die.

Chagall’s quote also speaks to the calling of every soul. For when he says that “only love interests me,” he invites us to examine what truly moves us. How much of our lives revolve around fear, ambition, or bitterness — things that fade and exhaust the spirit? He calls us back to simplicity: to live by love, to create by love, to think, speak, and act from the center of compassion. To be “in contact with things that revolve around love” is to choose what nourishes the soul — beauty, kindness, gratitude, forgiveness. In such a life, one ceases to chase shadows and begins to live in light.

There is profound wisdom here: love is not a weakness, but the highest intelligence of the heart. It is what allows the artist to see beauty where others see dust, the parent to sacrifice, the friend to forgive, the stranger to care. The world may call such living naïve, but Chagall’s life shows the opposite — that it takes courage to remain tender in a cruel age. Love, to him, was not an escape from reality; it was a reclamation of it — the refusal to let hatred define the human condition.

And so, O seeker of truth, let this be your inheritance from Chagall’s wisdom: let love be your compass. Do not measure life by what you possess or achieve, but by what you love and how deeply you love it. Surround yourself with things that awaken compassion — with art, with people, with silence, with nature. Let all your work, whatever it may be, “revolve around love.” For when your life is guided by that one force, you live in harmony with the universe itself.

In the end, Chagall’s words are not only the creed of an artist, but a law for all who wish to live fully: “Only love interests me.” The rest — fear, fame, power — are but passing clouds. Love alone endures. It is the color that outlasts the canvas, the melody that echoes after the song has ended, the fragrance that lingers long after the bloom has fallen. To live in love is to live in eternity — and to see, as Chagall saw, that everything worth touching, creating, or remembering must forever revolve around it.