Top 100 Austin Kleon Quotes
#1. First, you have to figure out who to copy. Second, you have to figure out what to copy.
Austin Kleon
#2. Maira Kalman says, Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.
Austin Kleon
#3. Don't feel guilty about the pleasures you take in the things you enjoy.
Austin Kleon
#4. 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
#5. 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.
Austin Kleon
#6. 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
#7. There is no misery in art. All art is about saying yes, and all art is about its own making. - John Currin
Austin Kleon
#8. If you're worried about giving your secrets away, you can share your dots without connecting them.
Austin Kleon
#9. If we're free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running from it,
Austin Kleon
#10. If you want to be more effective when sharing yourself and your work, you need to become a better storyteller.
Austin Kleon
#11. Try it: Instead of keeping a rejection file, keep a praise file. Use it sparingly - don't get lost in past glory - but keep it around for when you need the lift.
Austin Kleon
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. The best way to get approval is to not need it.
Austin Kleon
#15. Dig into almost every overnight success story and you'll find about a decade's worth of hard work and perseverance.
Austin Kleon
#16. Don't wait until you know who you are to get started.
Austin Kleon
#17. If you want followers, be someone worth following.
Austin Kleon
#18. If you want fans, you have to be a fan first.
Austin Kleon
#19. Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing.
Austin Kleon
#20. 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
#21. If you ever find that you're the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.
Austin Kleon
#22. Today isn't just another day. Today I'll create something beautiful.
Austin Kleon
#23. 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
#24. Write the kind of story you like best - write the story you want to read.
Austin Kleon
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.
Austin Kleon
#29. In the digital age, don't forget to use your digits!
Austin Kleon
#30. Read deeply. Stay open. Continue to wonder.
Austin Kleon
#31. Surround yourself with books and objects that you love. Tape things up on the wall. Create your own world.
Austin Kleon
#33. We were kids without fathers ... so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves. - Jay-Z
Austin Kleon
#34. 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.
Austin Kleon
#35. 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
#36. 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.
Austin Kleon
#37. There is a kind of fallout that happens when you leave college. The classroom is a wonderful, if artificial, place: Your professor gets paid to pay attention to your ideas, and your classmates are paying to pay attention to your ideas. Never again in your life will you have such a captive audience.
Austin Kleon
#38. In fact, sharing your process might actually be most valuable if the products of your work aren't easily shared,
Austin Kleon
#39. The people who get what they're after are very often the ones who just stick around long enough.
Austin Kleon
#41. 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
#42. 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.
Austin Kleon
#43. The art of holding on to money is all about saying no to consumer culture. Saying no to takeout, $4 lattes, and that shiny new computer when the old one still works fine.
Austin Kleon
#44. Don't show your lunch or your latte; show your work.
Austin Kleon
#46. So go on, get angry. But keep your mouth shut and go do your work.
Austin Kleon
#47. 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.
Austin Kleon
#48. 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.
Austin Kleon
#49. You're never "keeping it real" with your lack of punctuation and proofreading, you're keeping it unintelligible.
Austin Kleon
#50. The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us - we start editing ideas before we have them.
Austin Kleon
#51. 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
#52. It's not enough to be good. In order to be found, you have to be findable.
Austin Kleon
#53. 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
#54. 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.
Austin Kleon
#55. 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:
Austin Kleon
#56. Marriage is two people in love standing in the same bathroom
Austin Kleon
#57. You don't want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.
Austin Kleon
#58. These days, most of us carry a fully functional multimedia studio around in our smartphones.
Austin Kleon
#59. Think about your favorite work and your creative heroes. What did they miss? What didn't they make? What could've been made better? If they were still alive, what would they be making today? If all your favorite makers got together and collaborated, what would they make with you leading the crew?
Austin Kleon
#60. You're only going to be as good as the people you surround yourself with.
Austin Kleon
#61. Many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other's work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.
Austin Kleon
#62. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.
Austin Kleon
#63. We don't make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies. - Walt Disney
Austin Kleon
#64. 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.
Austin Kleon
#65. The biggest task in the morning is to try to keep my headspace from being invaded by the outside world.
Austin Kleon
#66. 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
#67. 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
#69. 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
#70. Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts. Use it.
Austin Kleon
#71. 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
#72. Every artist gets asked the question, "Where do you get your ideas?" The honest artist answers, "I steal them.
Austin Kleon
#73. 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
#75. The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others.
Austin Kleon
#76. Step 1: Wonder at something. Step 2: Invite others to wonder with you. You should wonder at the things nobody else is wondering about.
Austin Kleon
#77. Remember: Even The Beatles started as a cover band.
Austin Kleon
#78. We all have the opportunity to use our voices, to have our say, but so many of us are wasting it.
Austin Kleon
#79. Online, everyone - the artist and the curator, the master and the apprentice, the expert and the amateur - has the ability to contribute something.
Austin Kleon
#80. The golden rule is even more golden in our hyperconnected world. An important lesson to learn: If you talk about someone on the Internet, they will find out. Everybody has a Google alert on their name.
Austin Kleon
#81. Pretend to be making something until you actually make something.
Austin Kleon
#82. 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.
Austin Kleon
#83. Marcel Duchamp said, "I don't believe in art. I believe in artists." This is actually a pretty good method for studying - if you try to devour the history of your discipline all at once, you'll choke.
Austin Kleon
#84. 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
#85. you want attention only after you're doing really good work. There's no pressure when you're unknown. You can do what you want. Experiment. Do things just for the fun of it. When you're unknown, there's nothing to distract you from getting better.
Austin Kleon
#86. Take time to be bored. One time I heard a coworker say, When I get busy, I get stupid.
Austin Kleon
#87. Be boring. (It's the only way to get work done.)
Austin Kleon
#88. A lot of social media is just about typing into boxes.
Austin Kleon
#89. We found the future, like birds fly into windows.
Austin Kleon
#90. the only way to find your voice is to use it.
Austin Kleon
#91. The "lone genius" myth: An individual with superhuman talents appears out of nowhere at certain points in history, free of influences or precedent, with a direct connection to God or The Muse.
Austin Kleon
#92. The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act,
Austin Kleon
#93. The thing is, you can cut off a couple passions and only focus on one, but after a while, you'll start to feel phantom limb pain.
Austin Kleon
#94. 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
#95. When you get rid of old material, you push yourself further and come up with something better.
Austin Kleon
#96. You just have to be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done.
Austin Kleon
#97. 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
#99. Don't worry about unity from piece to piece - what unifies all of your work is the fact that you made it.
Austin Kleon
#100. The worst troll is the one that lives in your head.
Austin Kleon
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