Quotes About Craftsmanship

A proper drink at the right time—one mixed with care and skill and served in a true spirit of hospitality—is better than any other made thing at giving us the illusion, at least, that we're getting what we want from life. A cat can gaze upon a king, as the proverb goes, and after a Dry Martini or a Sazerac Cocktail or two, we're all cats.

Although there can be fast improvements all over a book, it won't gel into a single cohesive life right away. Keep going, keep faith, because it can follow the reductive dynamic of a slow meat stock. You boil it down for fifty hours, and, sure, it distils mathematically, you can see it reducing and growing richer hour by hour. But flavour and texture don't gel until the last ten minutes. Always simmer your work until then.

The desire to write well can never be fulfilled without hard work.

Father's life was only a very small part of the life of a tea bowl.

Fra le tante cose che suscitano nell'uomo una sensazione di impotenza, l'architettura è più di ogni altra arte soggetta a condizionamenti. Luogo, materiale, destinazione, grandezza, costi, le bizzarre richieste del cliente, e inoltre i carpentieri, gli imbianchini, i mobilieri... [...] Una casa come testamento significa una casa come piacerebbe a me.

Function must dictate form.

Don't romanticise your 'vocation'. You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle'. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

but to create a real feeling—made

Writing is routinely described as creative —this has never struck me as a correct word. Planting tulips is creative. To plant a bulb(I imagine, I've never done it) is to participate in some small way in the cyclic miracle of creation. Writing is control.

A craftsman must probe to the very bottom of cruelty.

I pay a lot of attention to how things are done and the whole activity of building something is interesting.

Even if you plan your book, the actual writing is unplanned.

I love and admire Pankaj Tripathi as an actor.

There are many actors I really like and whose work I admire.

I admire many actors, including Amitabh Bacchhan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Irfan Khan, and many more.

Really, I've worked my whole adult life at fiction, to try and write fiction.

You don't make a decision about being a writer. There was a point, aged 21, when it became clear that this is who I am. The choice is how good you are going to be at it and how hard you are going to work.

There's a lot of artists out there who are pretty big but don't write their songs, they just have a lifestyle brand. These are all things that I think are a great enemy to music.

My ambition is to get better as an actor.

Andy Serkis is one of the best actors I have ever worked with. He might be the best actor I have ever worked with.

It's not like the computer magically does it for you. Animation just takes forever.

Nothing's occurring in animation - you manufacture everything.

Stop-motion is sort of the redheaded stepchild of animation. But it's incredibly beautiful.

For me, antiques are a passion.