Austin Kleon famous quotes

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.
-- Austin Kleon

#Love You #Voice #Use

Don't wait until you know who you are to get started.
-- Austin Kleon

#Waiting #Who You Are

Be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else--that's how you'll get ahead.
-- Austin Kleon

#Looks #World #Curious

Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you and what you do. They might even call you names. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored -- the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.
-- Austin Kleon

#Names #People #Misunderstood

You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.
-- Austin Kleon

#Stuff #Surround Yourself #Surround

Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.
-- Austin Kleon

#Running #Art #Book

Write the book you want to read
-- Austin Kleon

#Book #Writing #Want

You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.
-- Austin Kleon

#Facts #Mashups #You Choose

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

#Thinking #Average #Ideas

Usually, when we talk about creativity, it’s about self-expression, which is great, but for work to be art or design, there has to be someone on the other end. The audience makes the work come alive.
-- Austin Kleon

#Art #Creativity #Self

Genealogy of ideas. You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see.
-- Austin Kleon

#Teacher #Book #Ideas

Read deeply. Stay open. Continue to wonder.
-- Austin Kleon

#Wonder

The only way to find your voice is to use it
-- Austin Kleon

#Voice #Use #Way

Be boring. (It’s the only way to get work done.)
-- Austin Kleon

#Done #Way #Boring

Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend some time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder.
-- Austin Kleon

#Hard Work #Land #People

The thing is: It takes a lot of energy to be creative. You don't have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.
-- Austin Kleon

#Creative #Energy #Stuff

Inertia is the death of creativity
-- Austin Kleon

#Creativity #Inertia

The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there's a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love.
-- Austin Kleon

#Artist #Differences #Mind

It's in the act of making things that we figure out who we are.
-- Austin Kleon

#Who We Are #Figures

The best advice is not to write what you know, it's to write what you like.
-- Austin Kleon

#Writing #Advice #Best Advice

Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time.
-- Austin Kleon

#Important #Routine

Be nice. (The world is a small town.)
-- Austin Kleon

#Nice #World #Towns

Dig into almost every overnight success story and you’ll find about a decade’s worth of hard work and perseverance.
-- Austin Kleon

#Perseverance #Hard Work #Stories

Today isn't just another day. Today I'll create something beautiful.
-- Austin Kleon

#Beautiful #Today #Another Day

You'll either find the answer or you'll come up with a better question.
-- Austin Kleon

#Answers #Come Up

The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.
-- Austin Kleon

#Ideas

The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best—write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career:
-- Austin Kleon

#Writing #Careers #Advice

If you ever find you're the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.
-- Austin Kleon

#Inspirational #Needs #Rooms

We found the future, like birds fly into windows.
-- Austin Kleon

#Bird #Chaos #Window

Every artist gets asked the question, 'Where do you get your ideas?' The honest artist answers, 'I steal them.'
-- Austin Kleon

#Artist #Ideas #Innovation

There's an intuition learned through our work. Teaching others doesn't mean they can just go out and replicate it.
-- Austin Kleon

#Teaching #Mean #Intuition

If I'd waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started "being creative," well, I'd still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it's in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.
-- Austin Kleon

#Inspirational #Creative #Trying

Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Filmmaker John Waters has said, "Nothing is more important than an unread library."
-- Austin Kleon

#Inspirational #Book #Reading

In the end, creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out.
-- Austin Kleon

#Creativity #Ends

Google everything. I mean everything. Google your dreams, Google your problems. Don’t ask a question before you Google it. You’ll either find the answer or you’ll come up with a better question.
-- Austin Kleon

#Dream #Mean #Google

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.
-- Austin Kleon

#Jobs #School #Two

Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities.
-- Austin Kleon

#Ideas #Limitless Possibilities #Limitless

If you’re worried about giving your secrets away, you can share your dots without connecting them.
-- Austin Kleon

#Giving #Secret #Dots

Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.
-- Austin Kleon

#Ideas #Mashups #Remix

When people give advice, they're really just talking to themselves in the past.
-- Austin Kleon

#Past #Talking #People

Become a documentarian of what you do.
-- Austin Kleon

If you want fans, you have to be a fan first.
-- Austin Kleon

#Fans #Want #Firsts

Find the most talented person in the room, and if it's not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. Try to be helpful. If you ever find that you're the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.
-- Austin Kleon

#Trying #Needs #Rooms

There's a balance between what you want to give the world and what it needs. If you're lucky, your work is in the middle.
-- Austin Kleon

#Giving #Balance #Lucky

You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, 'We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.'
-- Austin Kleon

#Facts #Influence #Said

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.
-- Austin Kleon

#Love You #Writing #Voice

Copying is about reverse-engineering.
-- Austin Kleon

#Engineering #Copying #Reverse

Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder.
-- Austin Kleon

#Hard Work #Brain #Looks

Don't worry about doing research. Just search.
-- Austin Kleon

#Worry #Research

It sounds a little extreme, but in this day and age, if your work isn't online, it doesn't exist.
-- Austin Kleon

#Age #Sound #Littles

Art that only comes from the head isn't any good. Watch any good musician and you'll see what I mean.
-- Austin Kleon

#Art #Mean #Musician

That’s the thing you have to understand about the whole process of art (or the work that we do) – you’re only half of the equation. It’s an interaction between you and the person who’s going to experience the work. The person who’s going to experience the work is bringing just as much to it and is just as important as you are.
-- Austin Kleon

#Art #Important #Half

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.
-- Austin Kleon

#Artist #Creative #Good Art

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

#Thinking #Self #Machines

The best way to get started on the path of sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.
-- Austin Kleon

#Commitment #Thinking #Want

The people who get what they’re after are very often the ones who just stick around long enough.
-- Austin Kleon

#Long #People #Sticks

You can’t be content with mastery; you have to push yourself to become a student again.
-- Austin Kleon

#Mastery #Students #Push Yourself

Art is theft”) and Igor Stravinsky (“Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal”), I’ve always stolen from the people I admire – not plagiarized, mind you, but stolen bits of ideas and stylistic influences. If you steal widely enough, after all, your models are inevitably changed and the result is in the end completely yours. Kleon cites André Gide to this point, in a quotation I love: “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
-- Austin Kleon

#Art #Ideas #People

Amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing.
-- Austin Kleon

If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running from it,
-- Austin Kleon

#Running #Trying #Influence

In order to be found, you have to be findable.
-- Austin Kleon

#Order #Found

You can't find your voice if you don't use it.
-- Austin Kleon

#Voice #Use

Marriage is two people in love standing in the same bathroom
-- Austin Kleon

#Two #People #Bathroom

The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others.
-- Austin Kleon

#Minutes #Teach #Turns

Show your work, and when the right people show up, pay close attention to them, because they'll have a lot to show you.
-- Austin Kleon

#People #Attention #Pay

Unless you are actually a ninja, a guru, or a rock star, don't ever use any of those terms in your bio. Ever.
-- Austin Kleon

#Stars #Rocks #Use