Quotes About Craftsmanship

In terms of smaller changes over time, I think good plays are like poems. Every syllable counts. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts.

It's jewelry for men, so definitely it's very nice to have a good watch on your wrist.

I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

Chopin, Schubert, and Liszt had no idea of how to write for the piano.

No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine... before she realizes she's reading.

I can write a song in about an hour if it's a simple country song.

A writer without a pen would be like a duck without water!

Don't romanticise your 'vocation.' You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle.' All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don't think they're doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

I was never a quick writer, but composed with great care and efforts.

I'm not a writer's writer. I'm not a craftsman. I could be, and that would be a one-book-a-year operation.

But, somewhere in there, I did have the thought that this really fits in with my thinking about what I wanted to do; with what has to be done by a writer in order to stay alive as a writer.

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer. Not as somebody with a particular idea to sell, or something like that.

The treasure of a writer is to maintain their own style.

A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.

People send me songs all the time that are literally no-brainer hits... but for me, I'm an artist because I'm a writer.

Words are the basic tools, if you are a writer.

When you combine something to say with the skill to say it properly, then you've got a good writer.

When you're a writer, there is a selflessness that has to happen; you have to have equity with how you treat each of the characters and the information you bring into the room.