Top 280 Austin Kleon Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Franz Kafka wrote, “It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.” And Kafka was born a century before the Internet!”

— Austin Kleon

152. “The world is changing at such a rapid rate that it’s turning us all into amateurs. Even for professionals, the best way to flourish is to retain an amateur’s spirit and embrace uncertainty and the unknown.”

— Austin Kleon

153. “The worst thing a day job does is take time away from you, but it makes up for that by giving you a daily routine in which you can schedule a regular time for your creative pursuits. Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time.”

— Austin Kleon

154. “Whenever Picasso learned how to do something, he abandoned it.”

— Austin Kleon

155. “Marriage is two people in love standing in the same bathroom.”

— Austin Kleon

156. “Become a documentarian of what you do.”

— Austin Kleon

157. “Drawing is simply another way of seeing, which we don’t really do as adults,” says cartoonist Chris Ware. We’re all going around in a “cloud of remembrance and anxiety,” he says, and the act of drawing helps us live in the moment and concentrate on what’s really in front of us.”

— Austin Kleon

158. “You don’t put yourself online only because you have something to say – you can put yourself online to find something to say.”

— Austin Kleon

159. “I had a professor in college who returned our graded essays, walked up to the chalkboard, and wrote in huge letters: “SO WHAT?” She threw the piece of chalk down and said, “Ask yourself that every time you turn in a piece of writing.” It’s a lesson I never forgot.”

— Austin Kleon

160. “Relying on craft and routine is a lot less sexy than being an artistic genius. But it is an excellent strategy for not going insane.” – Christoph Niemann.”

— Austin Kleon

161. “Don’t show your lunch or your latte; show your work.”

— Austin Kleon

162. “Writer David Foster Wallace said that he thought good nonfiction was a chance to “watch somebody reasonably bright but also reasonably average pay far closer attention and think at far more length about all sorts of different stuff than most of us have a chance to in our daily lives.” Amateurs fit the same bill: They’re just regular people who get obsessed by something and spend a ton of time thinking out loud about it.”

— Austin Kleon

163. “There are a lot of destructive myths about creativity, but one of the most dangerous is the “lone genius” myth.”

— Austin Kleon

164. “Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.”

— Austin Kleon

165. “If you want to be more effective when sharing yourself and your work, you need to become a better storyteller. You need to know what a good story is and how to tell one.”

— Austin Kleon

166. “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.”

— Austin Kleon

167. “We found the future, like birds fly into windows.”

— Austin Kleon

168. “If you want to change your life, change what you pay attention to. “We give things meaning by paying attention to them,” Jessa Crispin writes, “and so moving your attention from one thing to another can absolutely change your future.” “Attention is the most basic form of love,” wrote John Tarrant. When you pay attention to your life, it not only provides you with the material for your art, it also helps you fall in love with your life.”

— Austin Kleon

169. “What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” – William Ralph Inge.”

— Austin Kleon

170. “The people who get what they’re after are very often the ones who just stick around long enough.”

— Austin Kleon

171. “Even for professionals, the best way to flourish is to retain an amateur’s spirit and embrace uncertainty and the unknown.”

— Austin Kleon

172. “Whenever life gets overwhelming, go back to chapter one of this book and think about your days. Try your best to fill them in ways that get you a little closer to where you want to be. Go easy on yourself and take your time. Worry less about getting things done. Worry more about things worth doing. Worry less about being a great artist. Worry more about being a good human being who makes art. Worry less about making a mark. Worry more about leaving things better than you found them.”

— Austin Kleon

173. “The truth is that even if you’re lucky enough to make a living off doing what you truly love, it will probably take you a while to get to that point. Until then, you’ll need a day job.”

— Austin Kleon

174. “And remember: If you want maximum artistic freedom, keep your overhead low. A free creative life is not about living within your means, it’s about living below your means.”

— Austin Kleon

175. “You just have to be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done.”

— Austin Kleon

176. “Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”

— Austin Kleon

177. “Obituaries are like near-death experiences for cowards.”

— Austin Kleon

178. “The number one rule of the Internet: People are lazy. If you don’t include a link, no one can click it. Attribution without a link online borders on useless: 99.9 percent of people are not going to bother Googling someone’s name.”

— Austin Kleon

179. “If you try to devour the history of your discipline all at once, you’ll choke. Instead, chew on one thinker, writer, artist, activist, role model you really love. Study everything there is to know about that thinker, then find three people that thinker loved and find out everything about them. Repeat this as many times as you can. Climb up the tree as far as you can go. Once you climb your own tree, it’s time to grow your own branch.”

— Austin Kleon

180. “School is one thing. Education is another... Whether you’re in school or not, it’s always your job to get yourself an education. You have to be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else – that’s how you’ll get ahead.”

— Austin Kleon

181. “The solution is really simple: Figure out what time you can carve out, what time you can steal, and stick to your routine. Do the work every day, no matter what. No holidays, no sick days. Don’t stop. What you’ll probably find is that the corollary to Parkinson’s Law is usually true: Work gets done in the time available.”

— Austin Kleon

182. “Saying no is its own art form.”

— Austin Kleon

183. “Don’t be creepy. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t waste people’s time. Don’t ask too much.”

— Austin Kleon

184. “If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you’re so original.”

— Austin Kleon

185. “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. I think the same thing is true of our idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with.”

— Austin Kleon

186. “The right constraints can lead to your very best work. My favorite example? Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 different words, so his editor bet him he couldn’t write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss came back and won the bet with Green Eggs and Ham, one of the bestselling children’s books of all time.”

— Austin Kleon

187. “Think about your favourite work and your creative heroes. What did they miss? What didn’t they make? What could’ve been made better? If they were still alive, what would they be making today? If all your favourite makers got together and collaborated, what would they make with you leading the crew?”

— Austin Kleon

188. “My grandpa used to tell my dad, “Son, it’s not the money you make, it’s the money you hold on to.” Make yourself a budget. Live within your means. Pack your lunch. Pinch pennies. Save as much as you can. Get the education you need for as cheap as you can get it. The art of holding on to money is all about saying no to consumer culture. Saying no to takeout, $ 4 lattes, and that shiny new computer when the old one still works fine.”

— Austin Kleon

189. “How does an artist look at the world? First, you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing. That’s about all there is to it. When you look at the world this way, you stop worrying about what’s “good” and what’s “bad” – there’s only stuff worth stealing, and stuff that’s not worth stealing.”

— Austin Kleon

190. “The good thing about dead or remote masters is that they can’t refuse you as an apprentice.”

— Austin Kleon

191. “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.”

— Austin Kleon

192. “Filmmaker John Waters has said, “Nothing is more important than an unread library.”

— Austin Kleon

193. “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.”

— Austin Kleon

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

— Austin Kleon

195. “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.”

— Austin Kleon

196. “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.”

— Austin Kleon

197. “If I’d waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started “being creative,” well, I’d still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it’s in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.”

— Austin Kleon

198. “When in doubt, tidy up.”

— Austin Kleon

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

— Austin Kleon

200. “The computer is really good for editing your ideas, and it’s really good for getting your ideas ready for publishing out into the world, but it’s not really good for generating ideas.”

— Austin Kleon