Austin Kleon Quotes

Your attention is one of the most valuable things you possess, which is why everyone wants to steal it from you.

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. There’s

To establish your own routine, you have to spend some time observing your days and your moods.

Plagiarism is trying to pass someone else's work off as your own. Copying is about reverse-engineering.

LEAVE THINGS BETTER THAN YOU FOUND THEM.

You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences.

The computer is really good for editing your ideas, and it’s really good for getting your ideas ready for publishing out into the world, but it’s not really good for generating ideas. There are too many opportunities to hit the delete key. The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us — we start editing ideas before we have them. The cartoonist Tom Gauld says he stays away from the computer until he’s done most of the thinking for his strips, because once the computer is involved, “things are on an inevitable path to being finished. Whereas in my sketchbook the possibilities are endless.

Even for professionals, the best way to flourish is to retain an amateur’s spirit and embrace uncertainty and the unknown.

First, you have to figure out who to copy. Second, you have to figure out what to copy.

All the world’s a stage. Creative work is a kind of theater. The stage is your studio, your desk, or your workstation. The costume is your outfit — your painting pants, your business suit, or that funny hat that helps you think. The props are your materials, your tools, and your medium. The script is just plain old time. An hour here, or an hour there — just time measured out for things to happen.

Art is not only made from things that "spark joy." Art is also made out of what is ugly or repulsive to us. Part of the artist's job is to help tidy up the place, to make order out of chaos, to turn trash into treasure, to show us beauty where we can't see it.

Take time to be bored. One time I heard a coworker say, “When I get busy, I get stupid.

I don’t want to know how a thirty-year-old became rich and famous; I want to hear how an eighty-year-old spent her life in obscurity, kept making art, and lived a happy life. I want to know how Bill Cunningham jumped on his bicycle every day and rode around New York taking photos in his eighties. I want to know how Joan Rivers was able to tell jokes up until the very end. I want to know how in his nineties, Pablo Casals still got up every morning and practiced his cello.

Don't wait until you know who you are to get started.

Be boring. (It's the only way to get work done.)