Austin Kleon Quotes

I paint with my back to the world.” — Agnes Martin

Empieza a copiar lo que amas. Copia, copia, copia, copia. Cuando acabes de copiar, te encontrarás a ti mismo.

The trick is not caring what EVERYBODY thinks of you and just caring about what the RIGHT people think of you.

Así como tienes una genealogía familiar, tienes una genealogía de ideas. De plano no puedes escoger a tu familia pero sí elegir a tus maestros y amigos, la música que escuchas, los libros que lees y las películas que ves.

Tomlinson sugiere que, si te atraen varias cosas, sigas invirtiendo tiempo en ellas. “Deja que interactúen, que hablen entre ellas. Algo surgirá de eso.

Scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those great individuals; it just acknowledges that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.

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

Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 different words, so his editor bet him he couldn’t write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss came back and won the bet with Green Eggs and Ham, one of the bestselling children’s books of all time.

Barry Hannah said to one of his students, “Have you tried making yourself a more interesting person?” This seems like a really mean thing to say, unless you think of the word interesting the way writer Lawrence Weschler does: For him, to be “interest-ing” is to be curious and attentive, and to practice “the continual projection of interest.” To put it more simply: If you want to be interesting, you have to be interested.

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

We’re always being told find your voice. When I was younger, I never really knew what this meant. I used to worry a lot about voice, wondering if I had my own. But now I realize that the only way to find your voice is to use it. It’s hardwired, built into you. Talk about the things you love. Your voice will follow.

Amateurs are not afraid to make mistakes or look
ridiculous in public. They're in love, so they don't hesitate to do work that others think of as silly or just plain stupid. [...] Amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing
nothing.

Cuando abres al público tu proceso creativo e invitas a la gente, aprendes mucho.

Always be reading. Go to the library. There's magic in being surrounded by books. Get lost in the stacks. Read bibliographies. It's not the book you start with, it's the book that book leads you to.

The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act,” writes Clay Shirky in his book Cognitive Surplus.