Quotes About Craftsmanship

Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy based on excellence of performance.

Garry Shandling's stand-up specials were masterpieces of tightly crafted stories that delivered both hard jokes and hard truths. He was neurotic and self-deprecating, and his observations on life cut deep.

Playing a Fender is an art itself. They're always going out of tune.

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

I have a conscience about my work and try to turn out a good piece of craftsmanship.

I've always drawn a lot. I like the idea of turning a 2-D sketch into a 3-D thing very quickly. And clothing is really good for that.

Like turning potatoes or making a bearnaise sauce by hand, forming a cornet - essentially a DIY pastry bag - from parchment paper feels like one of those things culinary students do once or twice and then never again.

When I was around 12 or so, I saw 'The Shining.' I just remember that being a turning point for me, where I started to think about the fact that there was a hand behind the film. That it wasn't just this magical story being told - there were actual people crafting these films, and they were works of art.

I think that to make something alive, instead of on a page, is an honorable task. And it turns me on.

I think a man turns into a writer by editing his own texts.

I'm personally attracted to great writing - that's what turns me on the most.

I learn from Kevin Spacey and Tom Hardy, watching these guys work, the things they all do differently. Tom never stops exploring and discovering, take after take. His mind never turns off.

I have to say that one person I learned from the most as an actor in my life is Emmy Rossum. She is so insanely talented in the sense that when watching her work, it just turns into watching her speak - it's no longer acting; that's how good she is! She just becomes the person.

At the pinnacle of great design are products so gorgeous and lust-worthy that you want to lick them: a Porsche 911, Samsung's Luxia TV, an Eames lounge chair or anything by Loro Piana.

There is so much that I love about all aspects of making a film or a TV show.

Writing for myself and writing for another artist are two very different experiences. When I handle both the story and the art, I have full control. I can endlessly tweak every word and every line.

I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to break it apart and remake it every time I do a new draft.

You know, my first album, some of those jokes I'd done for twelve years because I couldn't throw 'em out.

I do try to deliver a solid first draft, meaning it's my tenth or twentieth draft and then I call it 'first' and hand it in, much to the chagrin of the studio sometimes when they look at the contract and go, 'You've passed your deadline.'

It may take hundreds of pages before you begin to get a handle on the craft of writing, and your first scripts may not work. The next five to twenty may not either. However, the ones that do work owe everything to the ones that didn't.

I have to re-write a lot. I couldn't tell you how many drafts I write, but I know I've done at least twenty rewrites on each book.

I know from teaching, that actors want to act. Even the subtlest actors can do a little too much.

And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care.

First of all I think of puppets as sculpture. They are sculpture that moves. You could label it any way you want, but for me it always starts in my mind as a sculpture.