Begin Anywhere Quotes & Sayings

This country was built on the backs of dudes who drank on buses. What we do honors them. — Sam Lipsyte

I would certainly say that films like Time Code and the Loss of Sexual Innocence were far more rewarding to me in terms of being able to move forward as a filmmaker. — Mike Figgis

As her psychosis took hold she moved deeper and deeper into the house, putting as much distance as possible between herself and the outside world. This became her world. To begin with it was just a few rooms. Then it contracted down to just this one, and then to just this tank. Even that wasn't enough. She constructed barriers to fool and delay the ghosts. Corridors that don't lead anywhere, or which spiral back on themselves. Hidden stairways that they won't see. Mirrors everywhere, to baffle and confuse her tormentors. Doors that open onto walls. Of course, even that isn't sufficient by itself. The ghosts are clever and resourceful, and they'll keep trying to find a way in. That's why the house has to keep changing, so that they never get used to one particular configuration. — Alastair Reynolds

We were anxious to begin our life as people who had no people. And it was easy to find an apartment because we had no standards; we were just amazed that it was *our* door, *our* rotting carpet, *our* cockroach infestation ... We were excited about getting jobs; we hardly went anywhere without filling out an application. But once we were hired - as furniture sanders - we could hardly believe this was really what people did all day. Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone's job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and to set it to music. — Miranda July

In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles. Writers who have neither product utopian trash. — John Berger

When we read, we decide when, where, how long, and about what. One of the few places on earth that it is still possible to experience an instant sense of freedom and privacy is anywhere you open up a good book and begin to read. When we read silently, we are alone with our own thoughts and one other voice. We can take our time, consider, evaluate, and digest what we read - with no commercial interruptions, no emotional music or special effects manipulation. And in spite of the advances in electronic information exchange, the book is still the most important medium for presenting ideas of substance and value, still the only real home of literature. — Andrew Clements

I'm a really claustrophobic person to begin with. I hate elevators, especially crammed elevators. I get really scared. So I think that it's very definitely scary when girls are all around me and I can't go anywhere. At the same time, I guess I got to get used to it, you know what I mean? — Justin Bieber

This qualification aside, I shall use the term gathering to refer to any set of two or more individuals whose members include all and only those who are at the moment in one another's immediate presence. By the term situation I shall refer to the full spatial environment anywhere within which an entering person becomes a member of the gathering that is (or does then become) present. Situations begin when mutual monitoring occurs, and lapse when the second-last person has left. In order to stress the full extent of any such unit, I will sometimes employ the term situation at large. — Erving Goffman

There is, it must be confessed, a curious fascination in hearing deep things talked about, even tho neither we nor the disputants understand them. We get the problematic thrill, we feel the presence of the vastness. Let a controversy begin in a smoking-room anywhere, about free-will or God's omniscience, or good and evil, and see how everyone in the place pricks up his ears. Philosophy's results concern us all most vitally, and philosophy's queerest arguments tickle agreeably our sense of subtlety and ingenuity. — William James

Write whatever you like! — Seamus Heaney

If you don't set goals, you can't regret not reaching them. — Yogi Berra

I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous. — Saul Bellow

The idea that I would get to see this revival was almost overwhelming. And in the last decade or so, I believe we have seen this revival begin to sweep the earth. We have seen amazing moves of God in Africa Recently, I was in China and met with the underground church. I was told there are at least forty-five million Full Gospel Christians in China. I discovered a depth of prayer and integrity there that I have not felt anywhere else in the world So I believe we are seeing Wigglesworth's prophecy begin to be fulfilled. We are seeing the first stages of it. — Lester Sumrall

[Wise men] have tried to understand our state of being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere. — Charles Fort

Chekhov said: let's put God - and all these grand progressive ideas - to one side. Let's begin with man; let's be kind and attentive to the individual man - whether he's a bishop, a peasant, an industrial magnate, a convict in the Sakhalin Islands, or a waiter in a restaurant. Let's begin with respect, compassion, and love for the individual - or we'll never get anywhere. — Vasily Grossman

Begin anywhere. Preferably right now. And if greatness should ever accidentally stumble upon you, let it catch you hard at work. Hard at work, and sane. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Scientifically, I know beginnings don't exist. The world is made of energy, which is neither created nor destroyed. Everything she is was here before me. Everything she was will remain. Her existence touches both my past and my future at one point - infinity. Lifelines aren't lines at all. They're more like circles. It's safe to start anywhere and the story will curve its way back to the starting point. Eventually. In other words, it doesn't matter where I begin. It doesn't change the end. — Shannon Lee

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world. — Eleanor Roosevelt

My eyes begin watering as I look up at the sky, squinting against the sun's glare. There's not a cloud anywhere, nothing, except the bird that I'm following as it swoops and rolls high above my head. I can't remember the last time I saw one this close up and my heart beat quickens as adrenalin begins to build.
Steadying myself on the rooftop, I shift my weight from leg to leg as it dips its wings and begins to drop like a stone until I think it's going to hit the ground for sure. My right foot stretches towards the edge of the roof as I lose sight of it in among the slums of Sanctum.
The place I call home.
The Wastelanders — Nicholas Grey

I was just trying to stay alive, looking for ways to find you, hoping you hadn't left me behind."
"Never," I say. "Not never."
He looks back up at me. "I'd never leave you neither."
"You promise?"
"Cross my heart, hope to die," he says, grinning shyly.
"I promise, too," I say and I smile at him. "I ain't never leaving you, Todd Hewitt, not never again. — Patrick Ness

I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write. — Mary Oliver

Begin to realize more and more that prayer is the most important thing you do. You can use your time to no better advantage than to pray whenever you have an opportunity to do so, either alone or with others; while at work, while at rest, or while walking down the street. Anywhere! — Ole Hallesby

Only a handful of people could be saved in all the world; these were the elect and clean, destined to begin a new race of humans and a new life, to renew and clean the earth, but no one saw these people anywhere; no one heard their words and voices.3 — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The plague spread and moved on. In the whole world only a few people were able to save themselves: the pure and the chosen, predestined to begin a new race of men and a new life, to renew and purify the earth; but these people were not seen anywhere by anybody, and nobody heard their voices or their words. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Not every day is beautiful. But there is beauty in every day. — Lynda Cheldelin Fell

Begin where you are. It would be unscientific to begin anywhere else. — Ernest Holmes

You couldn't begin to imagine who I am, where I'm going, or what I'm about to do, All of you are trapped here. You can't go anywhere, forward or back. But I'm not like you. I have work to do. I have a mission to accomplish. And so, with your permission, I shall move ahead. — Haruki Murakami

Let every man or woman here remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and with what you are. He who would be great anywhere must first be great in his own Philadelphia. — Russell Conwell

Object in/ and space - the first impulse may be to give the object - a position - to place the object. (The object had a position to begin with.) Next - to change the position of the object. - Rauschenberg's early sculptures - A board with some rocks on it. The rocks can be anywhere on the board. - Cage's Japanese rock garden - The rocks can be anywhere (within the garden) ... — Jasper Johns

When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him brought here. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Home"

It would take forever to get there
but I would know it anywhere:

My white horse grazing in my blossomy field.
Its soft nostrils. The petals
falling from the trees into the stream.

The festival would be about to begin
in the dusky village in the distance. The doe
frozen at the edge of the grove:

She leaps. She vanishes. My face -
She has taken it. And my name -

(Although the plaintive lark in the tall
grass continues to say and to say it.)

Yes. This is the place.
Where my shining treasure has been waiting.
Where my shadow washes itself in my fountain.

A few graves among the roses. Some moss
on those. An ancient

bell in a steeple down the road
making no sound at all
as the monk pulls and pulls on the rope. — Laura Kasischke

Those who want to be offended don't have the right to try and close down the newspaper that offends them. — Christopher Hitchens

I am from time to time congratulating myself on my general want of success as a lecturer; apparent want of success, but is it nota real triumph? I do my work clean as I go along, and they will not be likely to want me anywhere again. So there is no danger of my repeating myself, and getting to a barrel of sermons, which you must upset, and begin again with. — Henry David Thoreau

- Was I a swordsman then? sends Johnny. Or a poet? [Yes There is never one without the other] — Dan Simmons

I begin with the young. We older ones are used up but my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at all these men and boys! What material! With you and I, we can make a new world. — Adolf Hitler

Those that come to see me, do me honour; and those that stay away, do me a favour. — Edward John Trelawny