Quotes About Craftsmanship

It took me a long time to learn how to write a good song.

Part of the writer's task is to recognize what he's done, then dive back in and make the connections clearer. I'm a strong believer in getting things right the ninth or tenth time.

Making good design is easy. It's polishing the half-assed stuff that takes time.

If it is made with love, the imperfect becomes perfect.

Let's do it on the antimacassar, on the antimacassar -from Twenty Five Haiku

La pintura debía ser expresión de la totalidad del ser humano: su inteligencia, su destreza artesanal, su cultura, pero también sus creencias, sus instintos, sus deseos y sus odios.

The best dishes are often those to which the chef adds a personal statement, even when using a very old recipe. As Colette said, use a little alchemy

Once the first draft is done, the really tough work begins.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

original work fashions a form the true shape of which it discovers only as it proceeds, so the early strokes are useless, however fine their sheen. Only when a paragraph's role in the context of the whole work is clear can the envisioning writer direct its complexity of detail to strengthen the work's ends.

The line of words is a miner's pick, a woodcarver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory.

If you like metaphysics, throw pots.

At the base of my right forefinger is an inch-and-a-half diagonal callus, yellowish-brown in color, where the heels of all the knives I've ever owned have rested, the skin softened by constant immersion in water. It distinguishes me immediately as a cook, as someone who's been on the job a long time. You can feel it when I shake my hand, just as I feel it on others of my profession. It's a secret sign, a sort of Masonic handshake without the silliness.

Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable, and satisfying. And I'll generally take a stand-up mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day.

What most people don't get about professional-level cooking is that it is not all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavours and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking - the real business of preparing the food you eat - is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way.

when the chef starts thinking he's an artist rather than a craftsman.

Mexican food is about taking the time to do it right, about hours of slow simmering.

There is only one kind of immorality in fiction, and that is when you write badly.

She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never descended to construct a decoration.

Oh! do look at Miss Oriel's bonnet the next time you see her. I cannot understand why it should be so, but I am sure of this—no English fingers could put together such a bonnet as that; and I am nearly sure that no French fingers could do it in England.

BUT SOMEHOW, IF YOU want to badly enough, you can always report a story. It feels like magic but it works like carpentry. You build a frame, and then you build on that, and pretty soon you have something to stand on so you can hammer away at a height that was initially out of reach.

Homero, más que ningún otro, nos ha enseñado a todos el arte de forjar mentiras de manera adecuada

There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness.