Quotes About Craftsmanship

I don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care: I rewrite a lot. If anything is sort of clumsy and not possible to read aloud to oneself, which I think one should do... it doesn't work.

Maybe people have no idea how much work is behind a picture. It can seem very effortless, but there is a lot of work. It's exactly like doing ballet. It's hours and hours, but when you go onstage, it's just the pleasure of dancing.

I became a set designer for opera.

The art is nothing without the gift. But the gift is nothing without work.

A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

We should remember that all the arts are fine arts and all the arts decorative arts.

et ignotas animum dimittit in artes, naturamque nouat. (to arts unknown he bends his wits, and alters nature.)

The workmanship was better than the subject matter.

et ignotas animum dimittit in artes, naturamque nouat.

Ars est celaree artem.

Every day, hands are creating the world -from In Praise of Ironing

The more technique you have the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is the less there is.

True or false? Ars est celare artem (Art lies in concealing the art).

If any man love the instruments of any craft, the gods have called him.

If any man loves the instruments of any craft, the gods have called him.

she was writing a letter in her beautiful penmanship, her sentences all like well-made bracelets.

What immense satisfaction it must be to fashion a story like [Maupassant's]! One must say 'fashion' because it is not merely writing, but massing and cutting away like a sculptor, chiseling lean and clear. And to put one's work confidently in the crucible of Time; to know that in six perfect pages is the finest form of one's idea: This satisfaction is the only true reward of the artist, and this his highest possible joy on Earth.

A book is not a thing of one sitting, like a poem, but a longish thing which takes time and energy and since it takes skill, too, the first effort or maybe the second may not find a market.

Her name is Maud Silver. Louisa says she has solved many difficult cases besides being an extremely expert knitter.

Since the days of Michelangelo, sculptors had been hiding the flaws in their work by smearing hot wax into the cracks and then dabbing the wax with stone dust. The method was considered cheating, and therefore, any sculpture "without wax"—literally sine cera—was considered a "sincere" piece of art.