340 Quotes by Austin Kleon

You need to find a way to bring your body into your work.

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.

On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the mediocre and the good is vast. Mediocrity is, however, still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.” Amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing.

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

Newspaper reporters call this a “morgue file” – I like that name even better. Your morgue file is where you keep the dead things that you’ll later reanimate in your work. “It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.” – Mark Twain.

You avoid stalling out in your career by never losing momentum.

Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.

If you want people to know about what you do and the things you care about, you have to share.

A lot of people are so used to just seeing the outcome of work. They never see the side of the work you go through to produce the outcome.” – Michael Jackson.