Austin Kleon Quotes
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Today isn't just another day. Today I'll create something beautiful.
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Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts.
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The best way to get started on the path of sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.
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Don't think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine.
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It sounds a little extreme, but in this day and age, if your work isn't online, it doesn't exist.
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Show your work, and when the right people show up, pay close attention to them, because they'll have a lot to show you.
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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.
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It's in the act of making things that we figure out who we are.
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Unless you are actually a ninja, a guru, or a rock star, don't ever use any of those terms in your bio. Ever.
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What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.
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Write the book you want to read
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The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others.
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The only way to find your voice is to use it
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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.
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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.
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Art is theft”) and Igor Stravinsky (“Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal”), I’ve always stolen from the people I admire – not plagiarized, mind you, but stolen bits of ideas and stylistic influences. If you steal widely enough, after all, your models are inevitably changed and the result is in the end completely yours. Kleon cites André Gide to this point, in a quotation I love: “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
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In the end, creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out.
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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.
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So go on, get angry. But keep your mouth shut and go do your work.
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Amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing.
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Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities.
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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."
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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.
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Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.
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Inertia is the death of creativity
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Be nice. (The world is a small town.)
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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."
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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.
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We found the future, like birds fly into windows.
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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.
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