Austin Kleon Quotes

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

You have to remember that your work is something you do, not who you are. This is especially hard for artists to accept, as so much of what they do is personal. Keep close to your family, friends, and the people who love you for you, not just the work.

Forget about being an expert or a professional, and wear your amateurism (your heart, your love) on your sleeve. Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you.

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

Wunderkammern, a “wonder chamber,” or a “cabinet of curiosities” in your house — a room filled with rare and remarkable objects that served as a kind of external display of your thirst for knowledge of the world.

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.

El manifiesto es éste: dibuja el arte que quieres ver, empieza el negocio que quieres administrar, toca la música que quieres oír, escribe los libros que quieres leer, crea los productos que quieres usar. Haz el trabajo que quieres que se haga.

productive procrastination. (Avoiding work by doing other work.)

Writer David Foster Wallace said that he thought good nonfiction was a chance to “watch somebody reasonably bright but also reasonably average pay far closer attention and think at far more length about all sorts of different stuff than most of us have a chance to in our daily lives.

Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas. A good example of this is genetics. You have a mother and you have a father. You possess features from both of them, but the sum of you is bigger than their parts. You're a remix of your mom and dad and all of your ancestors.

En algún punto tendrás que dejar de imitar a tus héroes para empezar a emularlos

Nic neochromuje víc než představa neomezených možností.

Worry less about getting things done. Worry more about things worth doing. Worry less about being a great artist. Worry more about being a good human being who makes art. Worry less about making a mark. Worry more about leaving things better than you found them.

A good pitch is set up in three acts: The first act is the past, the second act is the present, and the third act is the future. The first act is where you’ve been — what you want, how you came to want it, and what you’ve done so far to get it. The second act is where you are now in your work and how you’ve worked hard and used up most of your resources. The third act is where you’re going, and how exactly the person you’re pitching can help you get there.

Being a valuable part of a scenius is not necessarily about how smart or talented you are, but about what you have to contribute — the ideas you share, the quality of the connections you make, and the conversations you start. If we forget about genius and think more about how we can nurture and contribute to a scenius, we can adjust our own expectations and the expectations of the worlds we want to accept us. We can stop asking what others can do for us, and start asking what we can do for others.