Austin Kleon Quotes

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.

But remember what writer Colin Marshall says: “Compulsive avoidance of embarrassment is a form of suicide.” If you spend your life avoiding vulnerability, you and your work will never truly connect with other people.

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

"Soon after, you learn that most of the world doesn't necessarily care about what you think. It sounds harsh, but it's true. As the writer Steven Pressfield says, "It's not that people are mean or cruel, they're just busy."
This is actually a good thing, because 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. No public image to manage. No huge paycheck on the line. No stock-holders. No e-mails from your agent. No hangers-on.
You'll never get that freedom back again once people start paying you attention, and especially not once they start paying you money.
Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts. Use it."

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.

Colin Marshall says: “Compulsive avoidance of embarrassment is a form of suicide.” If you spend your life avoiding vulnerability, you and your work will never truly connect with other people.

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

Validation is for parking.

Every artist gets asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” The honest artist answers, “I steal them.

If you have two or three real passions, don’t feel like you have to pick and choose between them. Don’t discard. Keep all your passions in your life. This is something I learned from the playwright Steven Tomlinson.

Como dijo Salvador Dalí: “Aquellos que no quieren imitar nada, no producen nada.

We can stop asking what others can do for us, and start asking what we can do for others.

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

The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes of all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning, we cannot begin to see. Unless we see, we cannot think.” — Thomas Merton

Be ambitious. Keep yourself busy. Think bigger. Expand your audience. Don’t hobble yourself in the name of “keeping it real,” or “not selling out.” Try new things.