Quotes About Craftsmanship

Had I a ropemaker to my father, and someone had cast it in my teeth, I would forthwith have written in praise of ropemakers, and proved it by sound sillogistry to be one of the seven liberal sciences.

celadon vase

But such occasions of excellence became less and less frequent. As her technique became sounder, [her] sincerity became less necessary.

I think there's a percentage [of the audience] that don't realize, that don't know that [standup] is how everything began. We planned it, we work hard, rehearsals to get this. It's more of a ... it's not just coming in there in a T-shirt and holding a microphone.

With fashion, you really need to understand the aspects of construction. Not just design on an iPad.

Humans are very complex; I definitely have a new respect for authors that are able to write books nonstop. It's an incredible talent.

A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.

I've always believed that you have to have the skills before you destroy the skills. If you want to be crude, be crude, but don't be crude because you don't know how to do it, because you're not perfect at drawing and pattern-cutting.

I think I'd have to say my favorite IWC. They have been around for so long and the craftsmanship is top notch. A watch maker that has been in business over 100 years has to know what they are doing.

By the time I sit down ready to write, I've done a lot of longhand and a lot of note collecting along the way.

I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much deliberateness about it.

I'm saying nothing new that Dave Pasquesi is really good at what he does.

It is not me who is to be noticed. It is my work.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

The short story can't really hold an interesting event. It can't hold a death or a war or a loss of great magnitude the way either a long story or a novel can.

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

The short story is an imploding universe. It has all the boil of energy inside it. A novel has shrapnel going all over the place. You can have a mistake in a novel. A short story has to be perfect.

I think that's the most important job of a novelist - to bring authority to their writing.

What a good novelist does with a throwaway that serves no fictional purpose is throw it away.

The novel is resilient, and so are novelists.

Novelists seem to fall into two distinct categories - those that plan and those that just see where it takes them. I am very much the former category.

I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows.

Writing novels is the most exciting.

Most of the people nowadays send their things by internet. But I cannot work that way. I like to do it myself.