Quotes About Craftsmanship

There's nothing more thrilling than watching great actors say things that you wrote and bring them to life.

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

By the time I wrote 'Any Given Sunday' or 'Bats,' I sort of knew what my job was in terms of what a writer of dialogue does.

Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote.

I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.

I have friends who are blacksmiths in the north of Scotland, so I took a few master classes with,them. I loved learning a new skill. I will never look at a piece of wrought iron the same way now. I can now make semi-decent knife blades and candlesticks myself.

Practice, learn the lines, work hard, don't be too respectful. Sometimes we can get too hung up on the fact that the material of the play is very finely wrought language.

Well, my piano's really beautiful. I actually have two pianos. I have a Yamaha upright from the '60s that's blond, wood, and black, and I also have one from the '20s from Chicago - not a well-known brand or anything.

I have played Yamaha instruments since I was young, specifically their alto saxophones, and I have always appreciated their top-notch quality when it comes to making instruments.

When I got to Los Angeles, I started building cabins in peoples' yards, building post-and-beam structures and cutting the joinery for those.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

I have my own office, and I'm there during the evenings and weekends. But during the week, I'm sitting in the middle of my studio, talking with everybody, deciding together every detail, every pallette, every yarn, every colour.

I want to be part of the resurgence of things that are tangible, beautiful and soulful, rather than just give in to the digital age. But when I talk to people about this they just say, 'Yeah, I know what you mean,' and stare at their mobiles.

What good is making a jewel if nobody see it? But cost depends on the story. To get those performances in 'Biutiful,' you need that time. You need 60 takes in a scene and a year to edit. It's not realistic to do it any other way.

I played at different restaurants with my dad for a good year before I started doing anything on social media. I wanted to hone my craft before I put anything out there.

To make a film like 'The Grandmaster,' I know I'm not going to make just a standard kung-fu film; it's not going to be just tricks or like wire works. So I spent seven years on the road interviewing different schools and a lot of real grandmasters from Chinese martial arts.

In those countries with centuries of a craft tradition behind their building methods, techniques are tightly coordinated under the direction of the architect.

The state of female artists is very good. But the very definition of art has been biased in that 'art' was what men did in a European tradition and 'crafts' were what women and natives did. But it's actually all the same.

Daggers have such beautiful, functional shapes, and decorating them is an ancient tradition.

I suppose there's a particular kind of efficiency about coming from a theatre tradition. You don't make a fuss, and you're cheap.

India and Italy have a lot in common, especially the tradition of luxury.

Compared to industry in Europe or Japan, where industry was based on a craft tradition, we are sadly behind.

The place where I think social media fails is in showing the knowledge, the tradition of stitching the clothing, of cutting the fabric, of the tannery, of the skinning of the jewels - this knowledge needs respect. Online and social media is the future, but we need to learn from the past, too.

I am very aware that I'm the product of growing up in England and the tradition of designing and making, of England industrialising first.