Austin Kleon Quotes

“Life is a lonely bussiness”

“How hard it is to kill hope! Time after time, one thinks one has trodden it down, stamped it to death. Time after time, like a noxious insect, it begins to stir again, it shivers back again into a faint tremulous life. Once more it worms its way into one's heart, to instil its poison, to gnaw away the solid hard foundations of life and leave in their place the hollow phantom of illusion.”

“I have occupied this idle, empty winter with writing a story. It has been written to please myself, without thought of my own vanity or modesty, without regard for other people's feelings, without considering whether I shock or hurt the living, without scrupling to speak of the dead.The world, I know, is changing. I am not indifferent to the revolution that has caught us in its mighty skirts, to the enormity of the flood that is threatening to submerge us. But what could I do? In the welter of the surrounding storm, I have taken refuge for a moment on this little raft, constructed with the salvage of my memory. I have tried to steer it into that calm haven of art in which I still believe. I have tried to avoid some of the rocks and sandbanks that guard its entrance.[from the introduction]”

“People need to get smart and understand that politics is a wrong bussiness for ugly people and those ugly people are "Politicians" so please do not trust politicians and do not have any faith in politic.”

“God is usually on the side of big squadrons and against little ones.”

“We must like what we have when we don't have what we like.”

“Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great.”

“The name outlaw Christian describes the kind of Christian I am and the kind I’m setting myself free to become: namely, a follower of Jesus who no longer accepts cocky clichés, hackneyed hope, or snappy theodicies—defenses of God’s goodness and power—that explain away evil and suffering with a theo-magical sleight of hand. An outlaw Christian doesn’t condemn questions or discourage doubt. Instead, an outlaw Christian seeks to live an authentic life of faith and integrity, and chooses the defy the unwritten laws governing suffering, grief, and hope that our culture and religious traditions have asked us to ingest. The faith of an outlaw Christian is bold, outspoken, and active in a world of pain.”

“Why should a financial engineer be paid four, four times... to a hundred times more than the, uh... real engineer?A real engineer build bridges, a financial engineer build, build dreams.And when those dream turn out to be nightmares, other people pay for it.”

“A business fails when motive becomes more important than the trust.”