Austin Kleon

“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.”

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

How does an artist look at the world?
First, you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing.

“The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.”
—David Bowie

The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something “original,” nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.

André Gide put it, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

You’re a remix of your mom and dad and all of your ancestors.

You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see.
You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

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.