Quotes About Craftsmanship

Remember the fairy story "The Elves and the Shoemaker"? The shoemaker found that if he cut out the leather, and laid out the patterns before retiring, little elves came and actually put the shoes together for him while he was sleeping.

What can a sculptor do without the chisel and the hammer? And what can an impostor politician do without the ignorants and the uneducated?

when we stop knowing how to use our hands to meet our most basic needs—we become estranged from nature, from the value and meaning of things, and from the empathy that we need to care for one another and our world.

From about eight years old I was always making things on the sewing machine. Friends would see me making dresses and costumes, and I'd use difficult fabrics such as Lycra and elastic. But you know, my dad was creative and my brother is inventive too.

Malcolm's carved a fork." She ran her finger the length of the smooth wood before offering it to Elesyria for her inspection. "A small fork. Just like I told him I wanted.

Writing a picture book is like writing 'War and Peace' in Haiku.

Books are never finished. They are merely abandoned." Only thirty percent of published books turn a profit, so we can rule out material motivation.

No words are too good for the cutting-room floor, no idea so fine that it cannot be phrased more succinctly.

It's like she's made of steel, yet the most lovely, beautiful steel ever crafted. There's something always lingering just beneath the surface when you look at her — a sense of mystery and sex, of all the weapons one can use to be a truly compelling woman.

A New Sweater

Twelve days wil be heaps of time. You don't want to over-reherse these things, otherwise you lose that rough edge

The first draft reveals the art; revision reveals the artist.

don't know why this little cheese conquered so many," he said softly. "But if you asked me the secret, I'd say it was because we made it in our home, the old way, the way it had been made for hundreds of years. Perhaps in the United States you don't know what it's like to have old flavors, flavors from the past, from centuries before. But we live with them every day here.

The rest of us do "high school theater." Lou does "theater.

Few things that are made quickly endure.

Good writers serve their stories; bad writers serve their own agendas.

The beauty of doing film is that you construct whatever you do block by block and you can build something that will stay.

The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

Trifles go to make perfection,And perfection is no trifle.

If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.

The greatest artist does not have any concept Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain Within its excess, though only A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it