Austin Kleon quotes

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. (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. If you ever find that you're the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.
Austin Kleon
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.
Austin Kleon
Become a documentarian of what you do.
Austin Kleon
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.
Austin Kleon
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
Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.
Austin Kleon
Don't wait until you know who you are to get started.
Austin Kleon
Pretend to be making something until you actually make something.
Austin Kleon
You can't be content with mastery; you have to push yourself to become a student again.
Austin Kleon
The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by. (Austin Kleon)
You're ready. Start making stuff.
Austin Kleon
Read deeply. Stay open. Continue to wonder.
Austin Kleon
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
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
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.
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
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.
Austin Kleon
Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities.
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
Inertia is the death of creativity. (Austin Kleon)
The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us - we start editing ideas before we have them.
Austin Kleon
When people give advice, they're really just talking to themselves in the past.
Austin Kleon
There's an economic theory out there that if you take the incomes of your five closest friends and average them, the resulting number will be pretty close to your own income. I think the same thing is true of idea incomes. You're only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.
Austin Kleon
You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.
Austin Kleon