Austin Kleon Quotes

LEAVE THINGS BETTER THAN YOU FOUND THEM.

If you ask yourself 'What's the best thing that happened today?' It actually forces a certain kind of cheerful retrospection that pulls up from the recent past things to write about that you wouldn't otherwise think about.

I’m an artist, man,” said John Lennon. “Give me a tuba, and I’ll get you something out of it.

"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.

Obituaries are like near-death experiences for cowards.

creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.

And this, too, shall pass away.

We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on.

Carry a notebook and pen with you wherever you go. Get used to pulling it out and jotting down your thoughts and observations. Copy your favorite passages out of books. Record overheard conversations. Doodle when you're on the phone. Go to whatever lengths necessary to make sure you always have paper on you.

Es un fracaso convertirse en el ideal que a fin de cuentas nos define y nos hace únicos.” Menos mal.

On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the mediocre and the good is vast. Mediocrity is, however, still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.” Amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing.

"Dumpster diving" is one of the jobs of the artist— finding the treasure in other people's trash, sifting through the debris of our culture, paying attention to the stuff that everyone else is ignoring, and taking inspiration from the stuff that people have tossed aside for whatever reasons. [...] All it takes to uncover hidden gems is a clear eye, an open mind, and a willingness to search for inspiration in places other people aren't willing or able to go.

¿Mi ejemplo favorito? Dr. Seuss escribió El gato en el sombrero con sólo 236 palabras diferentes, así que su editor le apostó que no podría hacerlo con sólo 50. Dr. Seuss ganó la apuesta con Huevos verdes y jamón. Ambos son de los libros para niños más vendidos de todos los tiempos.

Become a documentarian of what you do. Start a work journal: Write your thoughts down in a notebook, or speak them into an audio recorder. Keep a scrapbook. Take a lot of photographs of your work at different stages in your process. Shoot video of you working. This isn’t about making art, it’s about simply keeping track of what’s going on around you. Take advantage of all the cheap, easy tools at your disposal — these days, most of us carry a fully functional multimedia studio around in our smartphones

Scribble on paper, cut it up, and tape the pieces back together. Stand up while you’re working. Pin things on the walls and look for patterns. Spread things around your space and sort through them. Once you start getting your ideas, then you can move over to your digital station and use the computer to help you execute and publish them. When you start to lose steam, head back to the analog station and play.