Austin Kleon

“Read deeply. Stay open. Continue to wonder.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Validation is for parking.”

“There is a kind of fallout that happens when you leave college. The classroom is a wonderful, if artificial, place: Your professor gets paid to pay attention to your ideas, and your classmates are paying to pay attention to your ideas. Never again in your life will you have such a captive audience.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Nothing is original. It says it right there in the Bible. Ecclesiastes:That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of previous ideas.”

“Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities.”

“Inertia is the death of creativity”

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

“Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want—that just kills creativity.”

“Eat breakfast. Do some push-ups. Go for long walks. Get plenty of sleep.”

“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.”

“Ironically, really good work often appears to be effortless. People will say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” They won’t see the years of toil and sweat that went into it.”

“Complain about the way other people make software by making software.”

“So go on, get angry. But keep your mouth shut and go do your work.”

“Find the most talented person in the room, and if it’s not you, go stand next to him.”

“The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.”

“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.”

“If you’re worried about giving your secrets away, you can share your dots without connecting them.”

“Show just a little bit of what you’re working on.”

“Step 1: Wonder at something. Step 2: Invite others to wonder with you. You should wonder at the things nobody else is wondering about.”

“Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts.”

“You’ll never get that freedom back again once people start paying you attention, and especially not once they start paying you money.”

“Keep all your passions in your life.”

“Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing.”

“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:”

“You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.”

“Copying is about reverse-engineering.”

“Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.”

“Pretend to be making something until you actually make something.”

“Pretend to be something you’re not until you are—fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them.”

“Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.”

“You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.”

“Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.”

“If you ever find that you're the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.”

“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. 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.”