Austin Kleon Quotes

If you ever find that you're the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.

Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.

You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.

Be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else--that's how you'll get ahead.

Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing.

The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there's a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love.

You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.

Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.

Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you and what you do. They might even call you names. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored -- the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.

Read deeply. Stay open. Continue to wonder.

You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.

The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best—write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career:

Google everything. I mean everything. Google your dreams, Google your problems. Don’t ask a question before you Google it. You’ll either find the answer or you’ll come up with a better question.

when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.

Don't wait until you know who you are to get started.

Pretend to be making something until you actually make something.

Keep all your passions in your life.

Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend some time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder.

School is one thing. Education is another. The two don’t always overlap. Whether you’re in school or not, it’s always your job to get yourself an education.

In the end, creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out.

So go on, get angry. But keep your mouth shut and go do your work.

Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.

Always be reading. Go to the library. There’s magic in being surrounded by books. Get lost in the stacks. Read bibliographies. It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that book leads you to. Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Filmmaker John Waters has said, “Nothing is more important than an unread library.” Don’t worry about doing research. Just search.

Find the most talented person in the room, and if it’s not you, go stand next to him.

Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff. It’s that simple.

The thing is: It takes a lot of energy to be creative. You don’t have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.

If you’re worried about giving your secrets away, you can share your dots without connecting them.

Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want—that just kills creativity.

Pretend to be something you’re not until you are—fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them.

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

But now I realize that the only way to find your voice is to use it. It’s hardwired, built into you. Talk about the things you love. Your voice will follow.

Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts.

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.

Step 1: Wonder at something. Step 2: Invite others to wonder with you. You should wonder at the things nobody else is wondering about.

Validation is for parking.

the worst troll is the one that lives in your head.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.

A wonderful flaw about human beings is that we’re incapable of making perfect copies. Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.

You can’t be content with mastery; you have to push yourself to become a student again.

Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities.

Don’t try to be hip or cool. Being open and honest about what you like is the best way to connect with people who like those things, too.

dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and you have to start doing the work you want to be doing.

Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Filmmaker John Waters has said, “Nothing is more important than an unread library.

The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best—write the story you want to read.

You’ll never get that freedom back again once people start paying you attention, and especially not once they start paying you money.

Ironically, really good work often appears to be effortless. People will say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” They won’t see the years of toil and sweat that went into it.

You're ready. Start making stuff.

As Salvador Dalí said, “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

If you feel like you have two or three real passions, don't pick and choose between them. Don't discard. Keep all your passions in your life.

Show just a little bit of what you’re working on.

Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don't out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.

Copying is about reverse-engineering.

The great thing about remote or dead masters is that they can't refuse you as an apprentice. You can learn whatever you want from them. They left their lesson plans in their work.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” —Gustave Flaubert

Eat breakfast. Do some push-ups. Go for long walks. Get plenty of sleep.

Complain about the way other people make software by making software.

I think it’s good to have a lot of projects going at once so you can bounce between them. When you get sick of one project, move over to another, and when you’re sick of that one, move back to the project you left. Practice productive procrastination.

chew on one thinker-writer, activist, role model- you really love. Study everything there is to know about that thinker. Then find three people the thinker loved and find out everything about them. Repeat this as many times as you can. Climb up the tree as far as you can go. Once you built your tree, it's time to start your own branch.

The world is changing at such a rapid rate that it’s turning us all into amateurs.

If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you're so original.

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere.

Write the book you want to read

The trouble with imaginative people is that we're good at picturing the worst that could happen to us. Fear is often just the imagination taking a wrong turn.

Don't wait until you know who you are to get started. If I'd waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started "being creative," well, I'd be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it's in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are. You're ready. Start making stuff.

All you need is a little space and a little time—a place to work, and some time to do it; a little self-imposed solitude and temporary captivity.

Become a documentarian of what you do.

The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.

Ask anybody doing truly creative work, and they’ll tell you the truth: They don’t know where the good stuff comes from. They just show up to do their thing. Every day.

Surround yourself with books and objects that you love. Tape things up on the wall. Create your own world.

The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.

You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time.

The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.

The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.

We all love things that other people think are garbage. You have to have the courage to keep loving your garbage, because what makes us unique is the diversity and breadth of our influences, the unique ways in which we mix up the parts of culture others have deemed “high” and the “low.” When you find things you genuinely enjoy, don’t let anyone else make you feel bad about it. Don’t feel guilty about the pleasure you take in the things you enjoy. Celebrate them.

The reason to copy your heroes and their style is so that you might somehow get a glimpse into their minds. That's what you really want - to internalize their way of looking at the wold. If you just mimic the surface of somebody's work without understanding where they are coming from, your work will never be anything more that a knockoff.

Creativity is about connections, and connections are not made by siloing everything off into its own space. New ideas are formed by interesting juxtapositions, and interesting juxtapositions happen when things are out of place.

We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on.

Relying on craft and routine is a lot less sexy than being an artistic genius. But it is an excellent strategy for not going insane.” —Christoph Niemann

Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.

Google it. You’ll either find the answer or you’ll come up with a better question.

Your influences are all worth sharing because they clue people in to who you are and what you do—sometimes even more than your own work.

It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.

Modern art = I could do that + Yeah, but you didn’t.” —Craig Damrauer

Writing a page each day doesn’t seem like much, but do it for 365 days and you have enough to fill a novel.

Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, go back to your documentation and find one little piece of your process that you can share.

Imitation is about copying. Emulation is when imitation goes one step further, breaking through into your own thing.

Always be reading. Go to the library. There's magic in being surrounded by books. Get lost in the stacks. Read bibiliographies. It's not the book you start with, it's the book that book leads you to.

Don't throw any of yourself away. Don't worry about a grand scheme or unified vision for your work. Don't worry about unity--what unifies your work is the fact that you made it. One day you'll look back and it will all make sense.

The way to get over creative block is to simply place some constraints on yourself. It seems contradictory, but when it comes to creative work, limitations mean freedom.

Inertia is the death of creativity

Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing. I get some of my best ideas when I'm bored, which is why I never take my shirts to the cleaners. I love ironing my shirts-it's so boring, I almost always get good ideas. If you're out of ideas, wash the dishes. Take really long walk. Stare at a spot on the wall for as long as you can. As the artist Maira Kalman says, "Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.

If I'd waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started "being creative," well, I'd still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it's in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.

Think about what you have to share that could be of some value to people. Share a handy tip you've discovered while working. Or a link to an interesting article. Mentition a good book you're reading.

Teaching people doesn’t subtract value from what you do, it actually adds to it. When you teach someone how to do your work, you are, in effect, generating more interest in your work. People feel closer to your work because you’re letting them in on what you know.

Everybody loves a good story, but good storytelling doesn't come easy to everybody. It's a skill that takes a lifetime to master. So study the great stories and then go find some of your own. Your stories will get better the more you tell them.

You might be scared to start. That’s natural. There’s this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It’s called “impostor syndrome.” The clinical definition is a “psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments.” It means that you feel like a phony, like you’re just winging it, that you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.” —Steve Jobs