Quotes About Craftsmanship

When I work I have a sculptor's sense of the shape of the words I'm making. I use a machine with larger than average letters: the bigger the better.

For a true work of creativity, you must reach beyond yourself to bring correct draftsmanship together with strong composition and lifelike colors.

Until the raw ingredients of a pudding make a pudding, I shall never believe that the raw material of sensation and thought can make a work of art without the cook's intervening.

The product of the head, heart and hand is a thing to be loved.

Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate, in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain

Wearing down seven number two pencils is a good day's work.

The painter is, as to the execution of his work, a mechanic; but as to his conception and spirit and design he is hardly below even the poet.

I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.

There's no workman, whatsoever he be, That may both work well and hastily.

Steady work turns genius to a loom.

Painting is manual labor, no different from any other; it can be done well or poorly.

A work of art is said to be perfect in proportion as it does not remind the spectator of the process by which it was created.

Almost everywhere men have become the particular things which their particular work has made them.

The second draft is on yellow paper, that's when I work on characterizations. The third is pink, I work on story motivations. Then blue, that's where I cut, cut, cut.

I love artists. I love watching other people work.

The poets are the standard bearers of language. Their work lives or dies word by word. When I write and can hear a clunky sentence, I try to write up to the poetry that I have recited beforehand.

Steve Martin is such an exquisite and precise writer. Everything is so clear; it's like a bell. He says what he means and says it so beautifully.

Steve Buscemi, in between takes, becomes like a clam. It's hard to get a word out of him. It's very funny.

I think that's all you do as an actor. You give ingredients for the edit, and the edit's the stew, and they try to make a meal out of it. That's all you are. You just throw things in. This is an idea, this is an idea.

When I do outdoor scenes, I tend to find a quiet space where I can sit and carve a walking stick that can turn out to be interesting for me.

In all these years of doing theatre, I've been a very physical performer - physically demonstrative, yet sticking to the realism of the piece.

I paid my way through college as a carpenter and a woodworker. So I've built the house I live in and most of the furniture that's in it, and I do a lot of woodworking still.

My job was to build, and that's still my job - and I like that better than interviews.

I can stitch a song together in about an hour anytime you want, but it won't have the depth.