Austin Kleon Quotes

Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas. Here’s a trick they teach you in art school. Draw two parallel lines on a piece of paper: How many lines are there? There’s the first line, the second line, but then there’s a line of negative space that runs between them. See it? 1 + 1 = 3.

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

My grandpa used to tell my dad, “Son, it’s not the money you make, it’s the money you hold on to.” Make yourself a budget. Live within your means. Pack your lunch. Pinch pennies. Save as much as you can. Get the education you need for as cheap as you can get it. The art of holding on to money is all about saying no to consumer culture. Saying no to takeout, $ 4 lattes, and that shiny new computer when the old one still works fine.

You’re only going to be as good as the people you surround yourself with.

Don’t worry about doing research. Just search.

I once heard the cartoonist Gary Panter say, “If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you’re so original!

The art of holding on to money is all about saying no to consumer culture. Saying no to takeout, $4 lattes, and that shiny new computer when the old one still works fine.

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

The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something “original,” nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.

Maira Kalman says, “Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.

once the computer is involved, “things are on an inevitable path to being finished. Whereas in my sketchbook the possibilities are endless.

Modern art = I could do that + Yeah, but you didn’t.

The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

I don't know for sure what kinds of flowers I'm planting with my days on this planet, but I intend to find out, and so should you.