Quotes About Craftsmanship

Al Pacino, De Niro, Daniel Day Lewis - they're the best out there because everything they do comes from a very honest place.

Working on 'Mad Men,' everything is word for word. And, honestly, I couldn't come up with anything better than that, so it's fine.

Cartooning is an honorable thing.

I've always been hooked on baking.

I don't know what it is really... I think I'm just good with hooks.

I don't make records to win awards. I make records to make records and hopefully make the records as good as they can be.

What a cool job to be part of - whether it's doing lighting or acting or serving food on set. You're part of telling a story that hopefully has an essential component, and that's super exciting to me.

You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.

It is probably like an artist. They see in their head what they want to draw, and they draw it. It is like I have a feeling inside me that I want to create on a horse, and that is what I do.

What is compelling with 'War Horse' is the jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring craftsmanship in this movie.

My first five novels were written longhand. So were hosts of short stories.

Having worked with Sarah Paulson on 'American Horror Story: Hotel' and seeing the lengths she goes to when shooting a scene, you go, 'Oh, so that's what this is going to be like.'

It would probably take me an hour to two to write it down, get the feel of it, and that's with quite a few changes. It's not really a hard thing for me to do.

I have a lot of tailors. If I want something made in 12 hours, it will be made in 12 hours.

I like to build houses.

People think bakers are dainty little housewives but they are not. They are quite controlling people who want to be told that they are loved.

When we eat something at a restaurant, however simple it may look, there's something in it that makes you think, 'Well, I couldn't quite do this from home.'

I'm largely interested in people who are just great actors, and they're not necessarily hugely famous.

A one-hundred-thousand-word novel might take a year or several years, and then you just come to 'The End' one day. But it takes hundreds of days to get to 'The End.' As a writer, you have to put in those hundreds of days.

All the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story... You've got good characters... People think there's some dramatic difference between writing 'Little Bear' and the 'Hunger Games,' and as a writer, for me, there isn't.

A writer discovers what he knows as he knows it, i.e., as he makes it. No artist writes in order to objectify an "idea" already formed. It is the poem or novel or story that quite precisely tells him what he didn't know he knew: he knows, that is, only in terms of his writing. This is, of course, simply another way of saying that literary composition is not the placing of a held idea into a waiting form.

When I write a song it's always from the point of view: makes the song the best it can be.

Old Flossie settle down on the other side of What-the-Dickens and dragged some handiwork out of a sack. She armed herself with two thorns shaped into knitting needles. A wodge of curlicued metallic scrubbing pad supplied the threat. 'I knit handcuffs as a hobby,' explained Old Flossie happily, and set to work. 'Idle hands get up to no good, so I like to be prepared in case I meet up with any idle hands.

I repurposed an old World War II merchant ship door into one of the best coffee tables you have ever seen. I have also made little cabinets and media centers.