Quotes: Milan Kundera

"Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its messages much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup." 

–– Milan Kundera (1929-2023), Czech-born French writer 

Source: Milan Kundera. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Translation by Michael Henry Heim. New York: HarperCollins, 1984; p. 48-49. 

via: Commonplace Book, 2013-2014, 2014, p. 92.

Quotes: Louise Penny

"His life had never had a rhythm. Each day had been unpredictable and he seemed to thrive on that. He'd thought that was part of his nature. He'd never known routine. Until now. 

"Gamache had to admit to a small fear that what was now a comforting routine would crumble into the banal, would become boring. But instead, it had gone in the other direction. 

"He seemed to thrive on the repetition. The stronger he got, the more he valued the structure. Far from being limiting, imprisoning, he found his daily rituals liberating."

–– Louise Penny (b. 1958), Canadian author 

Source: Louise Penny. The Long Way Home. New York: Minotaur Books, 2014; p. 4. 

via: Commonplace Book, 2013-2014, 2014, p. 173.

Quotes: Haruki Murakami

"A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect." 

–– Haruki Murakami (b.1949), Japanese writer 

Source: Daily Philosopher Instagram, September 10, 2024. 

via: Sketchbook N 14, 2024, p. 27.

Quotes: Russian proverb

"Repetition is the mother of all learning."

–– Old Russian proverb 

Source: Austin Kleon, February 20, 2024

via: Sketchbook L 2024, p. 2.

Quotes: Anthony Doerr

"We don't write what we know exactly, but rather we write to know. Writing in that sense becomes better understood as a kind of prayer, a kind of inquiry, something best done over time, repetitively, day after day." 

–– Anthony Doerr, American writer 

Source: Austin Kleon Tumblr, Friday July 26, 2024.

via: Commonplace Book, 2022-2024, 2024, p. 189.

Quotes: Kyo Maclear

"To what do we commit ourselves and for how long? Monet painted the Nymphéas two hundred and forty-seven times. "It took me some time to understand my waterlilies," he wrote. The older I get the more I understand this impulse toward reduction and repetition; the more I understand there is infinitude in a spartan focus, in Agnes Martin's geometries, in Giorgio Morandi's vases. Focalizing can be regenerative even for those of us who believe the sprawling clamour of the world demands our promiscuous attention.

–– Kyo Maclear (b. 1970), British-born, Canadian writer and artist 

Source: Kyo Maclear. Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2023; pp. 193. 

via: Commonplace Book 2022, 2023, p.108. 

Quotes: Thomas Edison

"I have not failed. I have successfully discovered twelve hundred ideas that do not work."

–– Thomas Edison (1847-1931), American inventor and businessman 

via: Commonplace Book 1999-2001, 2001. 

Quotes: Lance Letscher

""My work is really slow and repetitive. ... You have to go through almost excruciating boredom to be spontaneous and creative, to get to a place where the work really flows." For eight hours a day he combines experience and improvisation, As he described the process to an interviewer in 2004, "It is mysterious in a mundane way.""

–– Lance Letscher (b. 1962), American collage artist and Charles Dee Mitchell

Source: Lance Letscher Collage. Introduction by Charles Dee Mitchell. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2009, p. 6.

via: Day In & Day Out Notebook, 2019, p. 36. 

Quotes: Mark E. Smith

"It's not repetition, it's discipline." 

–– Mark E. Smith (1957-2018), English singer 

via: Sketchbook 33, 2023, p. 92. 

Quotes: Haruki Murakami

"The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind." 

–– Haruki Murakami (b.1949), Japanese writer 

via: Anvil Knapsack Sketchbook 2017-2020, 2017, p. 1. 

Quotes: Pina Bausch

"Repetition is not repetition. The same action makes you feel something completely different by the end." 

–– Pina Bausch (1940-2009), German dancer and choreographer 

via: Sketchbook 32, 2022, p. 41. 

Quotes: James Richardson

"Success repeats itself until it is a failure." 

–– James Richardson (b. 1950), American poet and critic 

Source: Rob Brezsny, Free Will Astrology, June 2, 2016.

via: Sketchbook 29, 2016, p. 98. 

Women's quotes: Mary Catherine Bateson

"Rituals use repetition to create the experience of walking the same path again and again with the possibility of discovering new meaning that would otherwise be invisible." 

–– Mary Catherine Bateson (1939-2021), American cultural anthropologist and writer 

via: Sketchbook 29, 2016, p. 114.

Quotes: Lido Pimienta

"There's a discipline that comes out of repetition and patience. You really have to have patience and then things will make sense. If you just do something, and you don't put a lot of effort into it, then you're going to have to justify it. And, to me, that is the worst thing for the artist, to have to justify something.

When you see a work of art, when you hear any composition, you have to feel something. You don't necessarily have to think the same thing the artist was thinking about when they were making the work, but you definitely have to think something that relates to the feeling that the artist had when they were making the work."

–– Lido Pimienta (b. 1986), Colombian-Canadian singer, producer, and visual artist 

via: The Creative Independent

Quotes 353: Leonard Koren

"Repetition is ... the essence of tradition." 

–– Leonard Koren (b. 1948), American artist, writer, and aesthetics expert

via Sketchbook 10, 2010, p. 120