340 Quotes by Austin Kleon

If you draw,” said the cartoonist E. O. Plauen, “the world becomes more beautiful, far more beautiful.

Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn.” – T. S. Eliot.

It helps to live around interesting people, and not necessarily people who do what you do. I feel a little incestuous when I hang out with only writers and artists, so I enjoy the many filmmakers, musicians, and tech geeks who live in Austin. Oh, and food. The food should be good. You have to find a place that feeds you – creatively, socially, spiritually, and literally.

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

The German writer Goethe said, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.” “We.

It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that book leads you to.

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

How does an artist look at the world? First, you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing.