340 Quotes by Austin Kleon

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.

Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once said that 90 percent of everything is crap. The same is true of our own work. The trouble is, we don’t always know what’s good and what sucks.

Don’t throw any of yourself away. Don’t worry about a grand scheme or unified vision for your work. Don’t worry about unity – what unifies your work is the fact that you made it. One day you’ll look back and it will all make sense.

What to copy is a little bit trickier. Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style.

The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.

Marcel Duchamp said, “I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.

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

Everybody loves a good story, but good storytelling doesn’t come easy to everybody. It’s a skill that takes a lifetime to master. So study the great stories and then go find some of your own. Your stories will get better the more you tell them.

The minute you stop wanting something you get it.” – Andy Warhol Chain-smoking.