Austin Kleon

Our culture mostly celebrates early successes, the people who bloom fast. But those people often wither as quickly as they bloom. [...] I don't want to know how a thirty-year-old became rich and famous; I want to hear how an eighty-year-old spent her life in obscurity, kept making art, and lived a happy life.

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

Don't think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine. Online, you can become the person you really want to be. Fill your website with your work and your ideas and the stuff you care about. [...] Stick with it, maintain it, and let it change with you over time.

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. The same principle applies to your life and your career. Whenever you're at a loss for what move to make next, just ask yourself, "What would make a better story?"

Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time. Inertia is the death of creativity. You have to stay in the groove.

The great thing about dead or remote masters is that they can't refuse you as an apprentice. You can learn whatever you want from them. They left their lesson plans in their work.

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. Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities.

If you get one thing out of this book make it this: Go register a domain name. Buy www.[insert your name here].com. [...] Your website doesn't have to look pretty; it just has to exist.

Human beings want to know where things come from, how they were made, and who made them. The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel and what they understand about your work effects how they value it.

If there was a secret formula for becoming known, I would give it to you. But there's only one not-so-secret formula that I know: Do good work and share it with people.

The way to get over creative block is to simply place some constraints on yourself. It seems contradictory, but when it comes to creative work, limitations mean freedom.

The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others. Share your reading list. Point to helpful reference materials. [...] Take people step-by-step through part of your process.