10 Quotes From Austin Kleon's Steal Like An Artist That Will Help You Understand Your Creative Side
It’s In The Act Of Making Things And Doing Our Work That We Figure Out Who We Are.
1
… when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.
2
Seeing yourself as part of a creative lineage will help you feel less alone as you start making your own stuff.
3
It’s in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.
4
We make art because we like art. We’re drawn to certain kinds of work because we’re inspired by people doing that work.
All fiction, in fact, is fan fiction.
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.
5
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.
6
All you need is a little space and a little time — a place to work, and some time to do it; a little self-imposed solitude and temporary captivity.
7
You can’t go looking for validation from external sources. Once you put your work into the world, you have no control over the way people will react to it. … They won’t see the years of toil and sweat that went into it.
8
Not everybody will get it. … So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored — the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.
9
Who you marry is the most important decision you’ll ever make.
And “marry well” doesn’t just mean your life partner — it also means who you do business with, who you befriend, who you choose to be around.
Relationships are hard enough, but it takes a real champion of a person to be married to someone who’s obsessed with a creative pursuit. Lots of times you have to be a maid, a cook, a motivational speaker, a mother and an editor — all at once.
10
In this age of information abundance and overload, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what’s really important to them.
(I will highly recommend reading Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon.)
