Remember: Even The Beatles started as a cover band. - Austin Kleon

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.

Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.

Don't think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine.

If you just mimic the surface of somebody’s work without understanding where they are coming from, your work will never be anything more than a knockoff.