Quotes About Craftsmanship

I try to do as much as possible for every character. Some of them, it is easier to do the research because you have either real examples that you work with, maybe some specific person that inspires you in that case, or the performances from other people, or the characters, or a character from a book.

Art requires choices, the more specific, the better.

I've always thought really good artists in general are overqualified. You're paid to stand there and do a line, but the guy has probably gone to drama school... but they have developed it to be just, like, one specific line.

In a really good, closely matched situation, the style of the boxer is every bit as explicit and specific to him as a painter's hand.

That's something that's really rare and special and what any actor would love - to have somebody that's specifically writing for you.

Everything we do on 'Luck' is absolutely no different than if we'd had been doing it in a feature film. There's no short cuts. The specificity of what every single line might mean. Everything Dustin Hoffman does. Kevin Dunn is as authentic in the last scene of the last episode as he is in the first scene of the first episode.

Everybody comes to the planet with certain gifts. It may be writing, it may be acting, it may be singing, it may be being a lawyer, it may be making a beautiful cabinet, it may be being a spectacular dry cleaner. It could be anything. We all have gifts in different areas.

I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad.

A great speech is literature.

You were taught how to do the things you needed to do. Dance, speech, fencing. They groomed people. If you were in a film, and the script wasn't working for you, they brought in screenwriters and fixed the scripts.

I want to be known to fans and appreciated as a 'boxer-painter' in regards to speed, footwork, punching power - an art form inside the ring.

I didn't become a good writer until I learned how to rewrite. And I don't just mean fixing spelling and adding a comma. I rewrite each of my books five or six times, and each time I change huge portions of the story.

I like presents that a man has spent time on, doing them himself, like a card or anything that is made by hand and from the heart.

It is sad that so many designers don't know how to make. CAD software can make a bad design look palatable! It is sad that four years can be spent on a 3D design course without making anything! People who are great at designing and making have a great advantage.

I love to use a lot of spices when I cook, so we actually cast a real peppercorn in gold and then just made a bead out of it for necklaces and earrings.

Spielberg shoots with one camera. The Coens, and I think this is right, maybe discarded one shot on 'No Country for Old Men.' That's something you want to aspire to, because nothing's out of place. Everything's necessary.

Fast bowling is an art, like spin bowling.

I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for.

Historically the director has been the key creative element in a film and we must maintain that. We must protect that, in spite of the fact that there is new technology that's continually trying to erode that.

There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast. It's like nothing else. It's like a love affair, it goes on and on, and doesn't end in marriage. It's all courtship.

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.

Wood is universally beautiful to man. It is the most humanly intimate of all materials.

It's not in the draftsmanship, it's in the man. Like I say, a tool is dead. A brush is a dead object. It's in the man. If you want to do it, you do it.

Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.