In May 2012, bestselling author Neil Gaiman delivered the commencement address at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, in which he shared his thoughts about creativity, bravery, and strength. He encouraged the fledgling painters, musicians, writers, and dreamers to break rules and think outside the box. Most of all, he encouraged them to make good art.

The Commencement Speech was distilled into a book format, Make Good Art, and designed by renowned graphic artist Chip Kidd. Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass on Storytelling, is one of my favorite Masterclass session have seen so far; I wrote a blog post about the lessons learned from the course.

Full Transcript of Neil Gaiman’s 2012 University of the Arts Commencement Speech:

I never really expected to find myself giving advice to people graduating from an establishment of higher education.  I never graduated from any such establishment. I never even started at one. I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I’d become the writer I wanted to be was stifling.

I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn’t, and often they commissioned me to write something else for them.