340 Quotes by Austin Kleon

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:.

A good pitch is set up in three acts: The first act is the past, the second act is the present, and the third act is the future.

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.

If you have two or three real passions, don’t feel like you have to pick and choose between them. Don’t discard. Keep all your passions in your life. This is something I learned from the playwright Steven Tomlinson.

Don’t be jealous when the people you like do well – celebrate their victory as if it’s your own.

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.’

Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.” – Jonah Lehrer.

When you get rid of old material, you push yourself further and come up with something better. When you throw out old work, what you’re really doing is making room for new work.

You can’t wait around for someone to call you an artist before you make art. You’ll never make it.