Keep Going Quotes

“Creativity is about connections, and connections are not made by siloing everything off into its own space. New ideas are formed by interesting juxtapositions, and interesting juxtapositions happen when things are out of place.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“Relying on craft and routine is a lot less sexy than being an artistic genius. But it is an excellent strategy for not going insane.” —Christoph Niemann”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“If you want to change your life, change what you pay attention to. “We give things meaning by paying attention to them,” Jessa Crispin writes, “and so moving your attention from one thing to another can absolutely change your future.” “Attention is the most basic form of love,” wrote John Tarrant. When you pay attention to your life, it not only provides you with the material for your art, it also helps you fall in love with your life.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“To be on brand is to be 100% certain of who you are and what you do, and certainly, in art and in life, is not only completely overrated, it is also a roadblock to discovery. Uncertainty is the very thing that art thrives on.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“If you draw,” said the cartoonist E. O. Plauen, “the world becomes more beautiful, far more beautiful.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“Whenever life gets overwhelming, go back to chapter one of this book and think about your days. Try your best to fill them in ways that get you a little closer to where you want to be. Go easy on yourself and take your time. Worry less about getting things done. Worry more about things worth doing. Worry less about being a great artist. Worry more about being a good human being who makes art. Worry less about making a mark. Worry more about leaving things better than you found them.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“Drawing is simply another way of seeing, which we don’t really do as adults,” says cartoonist Chris Ware. We’re all going around in a “cloud of remembrance and anxiety,” he says, and the act of drawing helps us live in the moment and concentrate on what’s really in front of us.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“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. I want to know how Bill Cunningham jumped on his bicycle every day and rode around New York taking photos in his eighties. I want to know how Joan Rivers was able to tell jokes up until the very end. I want to know how in his nineties, Pablo Casals still got up every morning and practiced his cello.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“When I’m stuck in the morning and I don’t know what to write about in my diary, I’ll modify the pros-and-cons list. I’ll draw a line down the middle of the page, and in one column I’ll list what I’m thankful for, and in the other column, I’ll write down what I need help with. It’s a paper prayer.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“The phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key elements of discovery: loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom. Those have always been where creative ideas come from.” —Lynda Barry”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“Let go of the thing that you’re trying to be (the noun), and focus on the actual work you need to be doing (the verb).”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“Yesterday’s over, tomorrow may never come, there’s just today and what you can do with it.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.” —Toni Morrison”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“These are the people I look to for inspiration. The people who found the thing that made them feel alive and who kept themselves alive by doing it. The people who planted their seeds, tended to themselves, and grew into something lasting. I want to be one of them. I want to make octogenarian painter David Hockney’s words my personal motto: “I’ll go on until I fall over.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“Rather than restricting your freedom, a routine gives you freedom by protecting you from the ups and downs of life and helping you take advantage of your limited time, energy, and talent.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“I don't know for sure what kinds of flowers I'm planting with my days on this planet, but I intend to find out, and so should you.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“It’s impossible to pay proper attention to your life if you are hurtling along at lightning speed. When your job is to see things other people don’t, you have to slow down enough that you can actually look.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“When I’m working on my art, I don’t feel like Odysseus. I feel more like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill. When I’m working, I don’t feel like Luke Skywalker. I feel more like Phil Connors in the movie Groundhog Day.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“Silence and solitude are crucial. Our modern world of push notifications, 24/7 news cycles, and constant contact is almost completely inhospitable to the kind of retreat artists must make in order to focus deeply on their work.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“To establish your own routine, you have to spend some time observing your days and your moods.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“When in doubt, tidy up.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“One afternoon, he was planting purple irises in the orchard under an apple tree. “Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting room window.” Hitler was making another speech. But Leonard had had enough. “I shan’t come!” he shouted back to Virginia. “I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.’” He was right. In his memoir, Downhill All the Way, Leonard Woolf noted that twenty-one years after Hitler committed suicide in the bunker, a few of those purple flowers still bloomed in the orchard under the apple tree.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“When we’re glued to our screens, the world looks unreal. Terrible. Not worth saving or even spending time with. Everyone on earth seems like a troll or a maniac or worse. But you get outside and you start walking and you come to your senses. Yeah, there are a few maniacs and some ugliness, but there are also people smiling, birds chirping, clouds flying overhead . . . all that stuff. There’s possibility. Walking is a way to find possibility in your life when there doesn’t seem to be any left.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“Worry more about leaving things better than you found them.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“And this, too, shall pass away.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“When you ignore quantitative measurements for a bit, you can get back to qualitative measurements.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“When you ignore quantitative measurements for a bit, you can get back to qualitative measurements. Is it good? Really good? Do you like it? You can also focus more on what the work does that can’t be measured. What it does to your soul.”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

“God walks out of the room when you’re thinking about money.” —Quincy Jones”
― Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad