These ideas are for everyone who’s trying to inject some creativity into their life and their work. These are things I’ve learned over almost a decade of trying to figure out how to make art, but a funny thing happened when I started sharing them with others - I realized that they aren’t just for artists. This book is me talking to a previous version of myself. It’s one of my theories that when people give advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past. As he puts it, “you are a mashup of what you let into your life.” Kleon goes on to delineate the qualities you’ll need to cultivate for the creative life - things like kindness, curiosity, “productive procrastination,” “a willingness to look stupid” - demonstrating that “creativity” isn’t some abstract phenomenon bestowed upon the fortunate few but, rather, a deliberate mindset and pragmatic ethos we can architect for ourselves. 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.”

(This piece of truth is available as a print from 20×200, one of the best places for affordable art.) So widely did the talk resonate that Kleon decided to deepen and enrich its message in Steal Like an Artist - an intelligent and articulate manifesto for the era of combinatorial creativity and remix culture that’s part 344 Questions, part Everything is a Remix, part The Gift, at once borrowed and entirely original. Some time ago, artist and writer Austin Kleon - one of my favorite thinkers, a keen observer of and participant in the creative economy of the digital age - was invited to give a talk to students, the backbone for which was a list of 10 things he wished he’d heard as a young creator: Much has been said about the secrets of creativity and where good ideas come from, but most of that wisdom can be lost on young minds just dipping their toes in the vast and tumultuous ocean of self-initiated creation.

Austin kleon