Skip to content
Home » Austin Kleon on Steal Like An Artist at TEDxKC (Full Transcript)

Austin Kleon on Steal Like An Artist at TEDxKC (Full Transcript)

Austin Kleon

Here is the full transcript of Austin Kleon’s TEDx Talk: Steal Like An Artist at TEDxKC.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon at TEDxKC

TRANSCRIPT: 

So there is a story about the composer Igor Stravinsky.

Stravinsky was about to start a new ballet. But instead of starting completely from scratch, he pulled out some of his favorite classic manuscripts, and he got out his red pen, and he started correcting the scores as if it was his own music. And he borrowed baselines and melodies from the famous works, but he composed his own harmonies and rhythms underneath that work.

And when the ballet came out, critics were outraged. They said, “How dare you do this to the classics? Leave the classics alone.”

Anybody knows Stravinsky’s reply? He said, “You ‘respect’, but I love.”

Well, I love newspapers. I grew up with newspapers. My parents subscribed to two different newspapers. My father in law and my uncles are both reporters, and I’ve been reading newspapers my whole life.

The trouble with newspapers is that they’re ephemeral. They don’t last. When we’re done reading them, they stack up in the recycle bin.

Despite all that, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t clipped something out of the newspaper. Our impulse is to save the things that mean something to us from oblivion. I think the human beings are collectors and artists especially. Not hoarders, mind you, there’s a difference. Hoarders collect indiscriminately, and artists collect selectively. They only collect the things that they really love.

An artist’s job is to collect ideas and the best way I know to collect ideas is to read. And what better thing to read than a daily dispatch of human experience that is the daily newspaper.

So, in 2005, I was right out of college, right out of undergrad, and I had a horrible case of writer’s block.