How to steal like an artist

I stumbled upon and read this yesterday, by some guy I've never heard of, but who wrote a book from blacking out newspaper columns (and spawned a fun poetry tumblr), and I enjoyed reading it. It's about the path of creativity (I was going to write "creative process", but I don't like putting those two words together). Some of the lines I thought were particularly interesting (as well as the fact that he sent me off to read about dramaturgy and quotes Goethe and Ecclesiastes) were:

All advice is autobiographical. It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.

As Flaubert said, “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

(He gets a little scarily too close to GTD for me to wholeheartedly like that last quote ... but ... curious.)

Your job is to collect ideas. The best way to collect ideas is to read. Read, read, read, read, read. Read the newspaper. Read the weather. Read the signs on the road. Read the faces of strangers. The more you read, the more you can choose to be influenced by.

And now I want to go black out some newspaper ...