Quotes: Elizabeth Cooperman

"It is clear to me now that nothing can save us from the crisis of beginning." 

–– Elizabeth Cooperman, American writer, Woman Pissing

Source: Austin Kleon, Instagram, January 1, 2025.

Quotes: Japanese proverb

"Beginning is easy, continuing is hard."

–– Japanese proverb 

Source: Sarah Harvey. Kaizen: The Japanese Secret of Lasting Change. Small Steps to Big Goals. New York: The Experiment, LLC, 2019, 2020; p. 250.

via: Commonplace book 2022, 2022, p. 3.

Quote: Aatish Taseer

"And this is what we tend to forget: In the careers of certain artists, those who make big, varied bodies of work in which different strands of their experience are subsumed, the business of beginning, and beginning again, never ceases. Each new beginning brings with it all the uncertainty and blankness of the first. Experience might protect such an artist from forcing what's clearly not working, but that core anxiety of not knowing if one will create again always remains. "Do not worry," Hemingway would console himself, "you have always written before and you will write now." 

–– Aatish Taseer (b. 1980), British-born American writer and journalist 

Source: Aatish Taseer. 'The First Stroke.' New York Times T Style Magazine, Sunday April 21, 2024, p. 53.

via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook L 2024, p. 15. 

Quotes: Danny Gregory

"I always find that if I have that glimmer of an idea, if I have that grain of sand to put in the oyster, I'm on the way. I'm going to get to the end by having a beginning." 

–– Danny Gregory, London, UK born artist, author, teacher, and speaker 

Source: Art Propelled, September 16, 2018. 

via: Sketchbook 30, 2018, p. 91.

Quotes: T. S. Eliot

"Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning." 

                            T.S. Eliot. Four Quartets: East Coker V excerpt

 –– T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), American-born British author 

via: Sketchbook A (oatmeal), 2015, p. 10

Quotes: unknown

"So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself." 

–– unknown 

via Sketchbook 19, 2012, p. 27

Quotes 337: T.S. Eliot

"What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning

The end is where we start from."

–– T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), American-born British author 

via Sketchbook 9, 2009, p. 55