Austin Kleon Quotes

Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time. Inertia is the death of creativity. You have to stay in the groove.

Do you have a troll problem? Use the block button on social media sites. Delete nasty comments. My wife is fond of saying, “If someone took a dump in your living room, you wouldn’t let it sit there, would you?” Nasty comments are the same — they should be scooped up and thrown in the trash.

One day at a time. It sounds so simple. It actually is simple but it isn’t easy: It requires incredible support and fastidious structuring.” — Russell Brand

Human beings want to know where things came from, how they were made, and who made them. The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel an what they understand about your work effects how they value it.

And Conan O’Brien tried to be David Letterman but ended up Conan O’Brien. In O’Brien’s words, “It is our failure to become “I have stolen all of these moves from all these great players. I just try to do them proud, the guys who came before, because I learned so much from them. It’s all in the name of the game. It’s a lot bigger than me.” — Kobe Bryant our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.” Thank goodness.

they have figured out a daily practice — a repeatable way of working that insulates them from success, failure, and the chaos of the outside world.

Disconnect from anything and everything electronic.

¿Y ahora qué?”. Si te fijas en los artistas que han logrado desarrollar carreras que duren toda una vida, descubrirás el mismo patrón: todos ellos han sido capaces de perseverar, con independencia de éxitos y fracasos. El director de cine Woody Allen ha sacado una película al año durante más de 40 años porque nunca descansa: el día que termina de montar una película es el día que se pone a escribir el guion de la siguiente. Bob Pollard, el cantante y compositor del grupo Guided by Voices, dice que nunca sufre bloqueos creativos porque nunca deja de componer. Ernest Hemingway se detenía en mitad de una frase al final de su jornada de trabajo para así saber dónde y cómo continuar a la mañana siguiente. La cantante y compositora Joni Mitchell cuenta que el punto débil de su último proyecto es la pista para el siguiente.

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 our idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.

Yesterday’s over, tomorrow may never come, there’s just today and what you can do with it.

In this age of information abundance and overload, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what's really important to them. Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities.

Ella me rescató. Estaría tocando en un restaurante de buffet si no fuera por ella. Bueno, ni siquiera estaría tocando en un buffet. Estaría lavando platos en el buffet.” — Tom Waits, hablando de su esposa y colaboradora, Kathleen Brennan

Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.

Franz Kafka wrote, “It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.” And Kafka was born a century before the Internet!

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.