Quotes About Craftsmanship

I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.

Never show unfinished work.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

I would say 'The Master' was one of the most inspiring things I've ever got to work on.

Till the master of all good workmen shall set us to work anew.

The goal isn't to do work and hand it in just before it's due. The goal is to do the work as beautifully as you can, faster than anyone else, so you can do more work.

It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

Filthy, mucky tools: filthy, mucky work. Clean, beautiful tools: clean, beautiful work.

A writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laborious.

I will try not to panic, to keep my standard of living modest and to work steadily, even shyly, in the spirit of those medieval carvers who so fondly sculpted the undersides of choir seats.

So wary as to disappear for centuries and reappear but never caught, the unicorn has been preserved by an unmatched device wrought like the work of expert blacksmiths.

I'd like to think I'm an actor who leaves things at work.

I like to do the camera work myself because I kind of feel it, you know, I don't articulate it, I feel it. It's the same with editing.

No matter how humble your work may seem, do it in the spirit of an artist, of a master. In this way you lift it out of commonness and rob it of what would otherwise be drudgery.

To watch a master work at anything is a privilege.

Art doesn't spring from the muses alone, but from hard work.

I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.

[A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.

There is no room in the world, as you say, for second rate work.

Anybody can do bad work, but not everybody does good work.

Singing always came naturally but the writing side is something I have always had to work hard at to get from good songs to great songs.

You really have to work hard to create a three-dimensional character. You have to rehearse and explore and take your time. You can't just memorize your lines and do it on the fly.

A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity.... No inspiration is too noble for it; no amountof hard work is too severe for it.

For the essential thing about the work of art is that it is work, and very hard work too.