Quotes About Craftsmanship

It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's craft.

Men are more important than tools. If you don't believe so, put a good tool into the hands of a poor workman.

The camera need not be a cold mechanical device. Like the pen, it is as good as the man who uses it. It can be the extension of mind and heart.

To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer - not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.

I want to make beautiful clothes for women and men who appreciate detail and quality. The product must be the best but this is almost secondary to the service the customer will receive.

The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly.

A man who is careful with his palate is not likely to be careless with his paragraphs.

Frank Capra was a prop man, I think. John Ford was a prop man. It was a little bit of a father and son thing, and you kind of worked your way up.

My biggest satisfaction is always when I make something beautiful and well-done that I can see on a real man or woman - not only in the glossy magazines.

Man was not then considered a good goldsmith unless he could draw well.

Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.

To write a word or a phrase or a sentence in Arabic is like crafting an equation, because every part is extremely precise and carries a lot of information.

Remember, too, that the trees for the wood that was used to build this piano were most likely planted in the late sixteenth century.

On a visit to the Steinway showroom in New York, I saw Henry Steinway, the last member of the family to be connected with the company, take out a felt-tip pen and sign the painted metal frame of a piano for an enthusiastic customer. It was like watching a baseball player sign a ball, or an author his book, and seemed in keeping with our age of celebrity.

The potter forms what he pleases with soft clay, so a man accomplishes his works by his own act.

Write all the time. I believe in writing every day, at least a thousand words a day. We have a strange idea about writing: that it can be done, and done well, without a great deal of effort. Dancers practice every day, musicians practice every day, even when they are at the peak of their careers – especially then. Somehow, we don't take writing as seriously. But writing – writing wonderfully – takes just as much dedication.

If you're a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.

Architecture is a discipline that takes time and patience. If one spends enough years writing complex novels one might be able, someday, to construct a respectable haiku.

The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces.

Great thoughts in crude, unshapely verse set forth lose half their preciousness, and ever must, unless the diamond with its own rich dust be cut and polished, it seems little worth.

Flat and flexible truths are beat out by every hammer; But Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to work out Achilles his armour.

If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won't save it.

A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.

know a Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice)