Austin Kleon Quotes & Sayings

If you just mimic the surface of somebody's work without understanding where they are coming from, your work will never be anything more than a knockoff. — Austin Kleon

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. — Austin Kleon

Pablo Picasso was notorious for sucking the energy out of the people he met. His granddaughter Marina claimed that he squeezed people like one of his tubes of oil paints. You's have a great time hanging out all day with Picasso, and then you's go home nervous and exhausted, and Picasso would go back to his studio and paint all night, using the energy he'd sucked out of you. — Austin Kleon

Conan O'Brien has talked about how comedians try to emulate their heroes, fall short, and end up doing their own thing. Johnny Carson tried to be Jack Benny but ended up Johnny Carson. David Letterman tried to copy Johnny Carson but ended up David Letterman. And Conan O'Brien tried to be David Letterman but ended up Conan O'Brien. In O'Brien's words, "It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique." Thank goodness. — Austin Kleon

We found the future, like birds fly into windows. — Austin Kleon

The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. - Annie Dillard — Austin Kleon

There's an intuition learned through our work. Teaching others doesn't mean they can just go out and replicate it. — Austin Kleon

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. — Austin Kleon

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

Scenius." Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals - artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers - who make up an "ecology of talent. — Austin Kleon

Become a documentarian of what you do. — Austin Kleon

You're never "keeping it real" with your lack of punctuation and proofreading, you're keeping it unintelligible. — Austin Kleon

Work that only comes from the head isn't any good ... You need to find a way to bring your body into your work ... If we start going through the motions, if we strum a guitar, or shuffle sticky notes around a conference table, or start kneading clay, the motion kickstarts our brain into thinking. — Austin Kleon

There's a balance between what you want to give the world and what it needs. If you're lucky, your work is in the middle. — Austin Kleon

These days, most of us carry a fully functional multimedia studio around in our smartphones. — Austin Kleon

In fact, sharing your process might actually be most valuable if the products of your work aren't easily shared, — Austin Kleon

Human beings want to know where things came from, how they were made, and who made them. The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel and what they understand about your work effects how they value it. — Austin Kleon

To be "interest-ing" is to be curious and attentive, and to practice "the continual projection of interest." To put it more simply: If you want to be interesting, you have to be interested. — Austin Kleon

Keep your own list, or get an account with an email newsletter company like MailChimp and put a little sign-up widget on every page of your website. — Austin Kleon

The important thing is that you show your appreciation without expecting anything in return, and that you get new work out of the appreciation. — Austin Kleon

Learn about money as soon as you can. — Austin Kleon

We don't make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies. - Walt Disney — Austin Kleon

Strike all the adjectives from your bio. If you take photos, you're not an 'aspiring' photographer, you're not an 'amazing' photographer either. You're a photographer. Don't get cute. Don't brag. Just state the facts. — Austin Kleon

The right constraints can lead to your very best work. My favorite example? Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 different words, so his editor bet him he couldn't write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss came back and won the bet with Green Eggs and Ham, one of the bestselling children's books of all time. — Austin Kleon

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

First, you have to figure out who to copy. Second, you have to figure out what to copy. — Austin Kleon

The solution is really simple: Figure out what time you can carve out, what time you can steal, and stick to your routine. Do the work every day, no matter what. No holidays, no sick days. Don't stop. What you'll probably find is that the corollary to Parkinson's Law is usually true: Work gets done in the time available. — Austin Kleon

Neil Young sang, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." I say it's better to burn slow and see your grandkids. — Austin Kleon

Read deeply. Stay open. Continue to wonder. — Austin Kleon

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. — Austin Kleon

My motto for creativity-
And remember, STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST. — Austin Kleon

It's not that people are mean or cruel, they're just busy. — Austin Kleon

I had a professor in college who returned our graded essays, walked up to the chalkboard, and wrote in huge letters: "SO WHAT?" She threw the piece of chalk down and said, "Ask yourself that every time you turn in a piece of writing." It's a lesson I never forgot. — Austin Kleon

This is yet another trait of amateurs - they'll use whatever tools they can get their hands on to try to get their ideas into the world. — Austin Kleon

Today isn't just another day. Today I'll create something beautiful. — Austin Kleon

Amateurs are not afraid to make mistakes or look ridiculous in public. They're in love, so they don't hesitate to do work that others think of as silly or just plain stupid. — Austin Kleon

In the first act, you get your hero up a tree. The second act, you throw rocks at him. For the third act, you let him down."- George Abbott — Austin Kleon

You can't be content with mastery; you have to push yourself to become a student again. — Austin Kleon

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

The trick is not caring what EVERYBODY thinks of you and just caring about what the RIGHT people think of you. - Brian Michael Bendis — Austin Kleon

Be boring. (It's the only way to get work done.) — Austin Kleon

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

You're only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with. — Austin Kleon

Write the kind of story you like best - write the story you want to read. — Austin Kleon

Dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and you have to start doing the work you want to be doing. — Austin Kleon

The worst troll is the one that lives in your head. — Austin Kleon

Like one of his heroes, Tom Waits, whenever Yorke feels like his songwriting is getting too comfortable or stale, he'll pick up an instrument he doesn't know how to play and try to write with it. This is yet another trait of amateurs - they'll use whatever tools they can get their hands on to try to get their ideas into the world. "I'm an artist, man," said John Lennon. "Give me a tuba, and I'll get you something out of it. — Austin Kleon

Nothing is original. It says it right there in the Bible. Ecclesiastes:
That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.
Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of previous ideas. — Austin Kleon

Don't worry about unity from piece to piece - what unifies all of your work is the fact that you made it. — Austin Kleon

Dig into almost every overnight success story and you'll find about a decade's worth of hard work and perseverance. — Austin Kleon

You should wonder at the things nobody else is wondering about. If everybody's wondering about apples, go wonder about oranges. — Austin Kleon

Having your work hated by certain people is a badge of honor. — Austin Kleon

Don't show your lunch or your latte; show your work. — Austin Kleon

Don't feel guilty about the pleasures you take in the things you enjoy. — Austin Kleon

The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life. - Jessica Hische — Austin Kleon

Don't say you don't have enough time. We're all busy, but we all get 24 hours a day. People often ask me, "How do you find the time for all this?" And I answer, "I look for it." You find time the same place you find spare change: in the nooks and crannies. You find it in the cracks between the big stuff - your commute, your lunch break, the few hours after your kids go to bed. You might have to miss an episode of your favorite TV show, you might have to miss an hour of sleep, but you can find the time if you look for it. I like to work while the world is sleeping, and share while the world is at work. — Austin Kleon

Art that only comes from the head isn't any good. — Austin Kleon

Maira Kalman says, Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind. — Austin Kleon

There is no misery in art. All art is about saying yes, and all art is about its own making. - John Currin — Austin Kleon

Show just a little bit of what you're working on. — Austin Kleon

When you get rid of old material, you push yourself further and come up with something better. — Austin Kleon

Writer David Foster Wallace said that he thought good nonfiction was a chance to "watch somebody reasonably bright but also reasonably average pay far closer attention and think at far more length about all sorts of different stuff than most of us have a chance to in our daily lives." Amateurs fit the same bill: They're just regular people who get obsessed by something and spend a ton of time thinking out loud about it. — Austin Kleon

The best way to vanquish your enemies on the Internet? Ignore them. — Austin Kleon

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. — Austin Kleon

You can't count on success; you can only leave open the possibility for it, and be ready to jump on and take the ride when it comes for you. — Austin Kleon

If you want to be more effective when sharing yourself and your work, you need to become a better storyteller. — Austin Kleon

A good pitch is set up in three acts: The first act is the past, the second act is the present, and the third act is the future. — Austin Kleon

Seeing yourself as part of a creative lineage will help you feel less alone as you start making your own stuff. I hang pictures of my favourite artists in my studio. They're like friendly ghosts. I can almost feel them pushing me forward as I'm hunched over my desk. — Austin Kleon

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

Every artist gets asked the question, "Where do you get your ideas?" The honest artist answers, "I steal them. — Austin Kleon

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. — Austin Kleon

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

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. — Austin Kleon

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. — Austin Kleon

Find the most talented person in the room, and if it's not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. Try to be helpful. — Austin Kleon

You can turn your flow into stock. — Austin Kleon

Comments outnumber ideas. — Austin Kleon

Be nice. (The world is a small town.) — Austin Kleon

Obituaries are like near-death experiences for cowards. — Austin Kleon

Mental scrapbooks form our tastes, and our tastes influence our work. — Austin Kleon

Usually, when we talk about creativity, it's about self-expression, which is great, but for work to be art or design, there has to be someone on the other end. The audience makes the work come alive. — Austin Kleon

Validation is for parking. — Austin Kleon

Words matter. Artists love to trot out the tired line, "My work speaks for itself," but the truth is, our work doesn't speak for itself. — Austin Kleon

Life is a lonely business — Austin Kleon

It's so important to have a hobby. A hobby is something creative that's just for you. You don't try to make money or get famous off it, you just do it because it makes you happy. A hobby is something that gives you but doesn't take. — Austin Kleon

Don't think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine. — Austin Kleon

If you look to artists who've managed to achieve lifelong careers, you detect the same pattern: They all have been able to persevere, regardless of success or failure. — Austin Kleon

The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us - we start editing ideas before we have them. — Austin Kleon

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

Complain about the way other people make software by making software. — Austin Kleon

There isn't a move that's a new move. The basketball star Kobe Bryant has admitted that all of his moves on the court were stolen from watching tapes of his heroes. But initially, when Bryant stole a lot of those moves, he realized he couldn't completely pull them off because he didn't have the same body type as the guys he was thieving from. He had to adapt the moves to make them his own. — Austin Kleon

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

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. — Austin Kleon

Genealogy of ideas. 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. — Austin Kleon

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

It's in the act of making things that we figure out who we are. — Austin Kleon

Copying is about reverse-engineering. — Austin Kleon

Ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them — Austin Kleon

One thing I've learned in my brief career: It's the side projects that really take off. By side projects I mean the stuff that you thought was just messing around. Stuff that's just play. That's actually the good stuff. That's when the magic happens. — Austin Kleon

The biggest task in the morning is to try to keep my headspace from being invaded by the outside world. — Austin Kleon