Austin Kleon

Unlock your creativity. An inspiring guide to creativity in the digital age, Steal Like an Artist presents ten transformative principles that will help readers discover their artistic side and build a more creative life. Nothing is original, so embrace influence, school yourself through the work of others, remix and reimagine to discover your own path. Follow interests wherever they take you—what feels like a hobby may turn into you life’s work. Forget the old cliché about writing what you know: Instead, write the book you want to read, make the movie you want to watch. And finally, stay Smart, stay out of debt, and risk being boring in the everyday world so that you have the space to be wild and daring in your imagination and your work. “Brilliant and real and true.”—Rosanne Cash

10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

Steal Like an Artist

Phoebe Ours

Miyamoto Musashi

If you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.

Indrashish Ghosh

It's one of my theories that when people give you advice, they're really just talking to themselves in the past.

Your job is to collect. The more you collect, the more you can choose to be influenced by

The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there's a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love.

School is one thing. Education is another. The two don't always overlap. Whether you're in school or not, it's always your job to get yourself an education.

Google everything. I mean everything. Google your dreams, Google your problems. Don't ask a question before you Google it. You'll either find the answer or you'll come up with a better question 

We're talking about practice here, not plagiarism- plagiarism is trying to pass someone else's work off as your own. Copying is about reverse-engineering. It's like a mechanic taking apart a car to see how it works.

Don't just steal the style. Steal the thinking behind the style. You don't want to look like your heroes you want to see like your heroes

At some point, you'll have to move from imitating your heroes to emulating them. Imitation is about copying. Emulation is when imitation goes one step further, breaking through into your own thing.

Steal Like an Artist quotes

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