340 Quotes by Austin Kleon

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.

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

But it’s not enough to be good. In order to be found, you have to be findable. I think there’s an easy way of putting your work out there and making it discoverable while you’re focused on getting really good at what you do.

In the first act, you get your hero up a tree. The second act, you throw rocks at him. For the third act, you let him down.“- George Abbott.

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

The phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key elements of discovery: loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom. Those have always been where creative ideas come from.” – Lynda Barry.

Like one of his heroes, Tom Waits, whenever Yorke feels like his songwriting is getting too comfortable or stale, he’ll pick up an instrument he doesn’t know how to play and try to write with it. This is yet another trait of amateurs – they’ll use whatever tools they can get their hands on to try to get their ideas into the world. “I’m an artist, man,” said John Lennon. “Give me a tuba, and I’ll get you something out of it.

What we respond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.

If you work on something a little bit every day, you end up with something that is massive.” – Kenneth Goldsmith “Stock.