Quote of the Day

You might be tempted to take Arnold (Schwarzenegger)'s advice: to visualize your goals, make a plan, and see it through.  You might even have a clear vision for what you want to do and who you want to be.  If you do, that's great, and you should go for it.  (I envy you!)  But I would discourage you from clinging to your visions too tightly, because your visions can blind you to what's actually in front of you -- who you really are and what you really can be.  Sometimes we get so focused on our vision that we simply miss a lot of the good around us.  The stuff we could really use.  We miss out on opportunities.  We get driven crazy by the mismatch between our vision and our reality.  The vision becomes more destructive than creative.

-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 178-179

Quote of the Day

No matter what age you are, you can stay curious and share your curiosity with other people of all ages.  You can be the Youth Spy for someone older and the Curious Elder for someone younger. 

-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 151

Quote of the Day

The Curious Elder doesn't try to be hip, or act young, or participate in youth culture; they're just open to understanding people younger than they are and seeing from the perspective they have to offer. 

-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 149

Quote of the Day

They look at my paintings and say, "My four-year-old could've done that."  And I say, "Yes.  But could you?" 

-- Sam Messer

Quote of the Day

Part of the creative person's service to the world is to spend way more time than an average person thinking about a particular topic. 

-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 126

Quote of the Day

I think a lot of what artists are doing is trying to figure out, "What is it I really like?"  That to me is the most important question you can ask in your life, actually.  It's the sort of guiding star of what you do.  It sounds like a trivial question, but actually what it means is, "What is it I really care about?" 

-- Brian Eno

Quote of the Day

If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful.  I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting.

-- Ray Bradbury

Quote of the Day

In your life, you will be evaluated by your output.  But your input is just as important.  If you don't have good input, you cannot maintain good output.  I know for a fact I could not do what I do if I was not zealous in managing high-quality inputs into my mind every day of my life.  That's why I spend maybe two hours a day writing, but I spend three to four hours a day reading and two to three hours a day listening to music. 

-- Ted Gioia

Quote of the Day

I don't really think the artist is an intellectual.  I believe that the artist is a set of nerves.

-- Wayne White

Quote of the Day

Just as it helps to think of the creative spirit as something we enter into, it also helps to think of ideas as things that visit us, rather than things we have ... You must make yourself ready to receive ideas.  If you aren't ready to receive the ideas, the ideas might go visit someone else. 

-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 93-94

Quote of the Day

The writer Henry Miller thought that the artist was simply a person who has antennae, "who knows how to hook up to the currents which are in the atmosphere."  You must learn to put up your antennae, to be ready to receive messages from the universe, to read its signs, and to take dictation from the unsayable. 

-- Austin Kleon, Don't Call It Art, p. 93

Quote of the Day

An adolescent or an adult who writes poetry or does philosophy has to cultivate innocence to be able to puzzle and muse over the simplest ways we have of saying and seeing things.  Sophistication may bring increased knowledge and, perhaps, a refined sensitivity.  But it may also encourage a cult of experts, dull sensitivity, and may reward flatulence in thought and language.  Every society needs a barefoot Socrates to ask childishly simple (childishly difficult!) questions, to force its members to reexamine what they have  been thoughtlessly taking for granted.

-- Gareth Matthews