Quotes About Craftsmanship

Things we build ourselves, they matter.

What one gains in technique can lead to deforestation in the writing that is both good and bad. Keep the energy and the willingness to proceed stupidly.

I like doing things where I can get dirty, work with my hands, and use power tools. Last weekend, I did some grouting.

A novelist can't be without a kimono and pen!(Shigure)

And then there was her face: her white skin, her brown eyes, and her expression, so soft and beautiful; she looked as though she were constantly getting ready to ask a question. Even an immaculately crafted doll could not have been as lovely.

There are no fascinating people, only their works are fascinating.

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.

WRITER Actors come and go, pal—you guys are the furniture, okay? What I write is the house. Let's not get all precious about it . . .

Sometimes I'll spend an hour writing a tiny email. I work on it until I've created the illusion that I've dashed it off in three minutes. If I make a typo, I let it stand. Sometimes in fact I correct the typo without thinking, and then I back up and retype the typo so that it'll look more casual. I don't know why.

First, I always go for the key, then I go for the rhythm, then I go for the melody, then I go for the lyrics, OK? That's how I do it.

And what we've lost sight of is that performing manual labor with your hands is one of the most incredibly satisfying and positive things you can do.

We can do things that we never could before. Stop-motion lets you build tiny little worlds, and computers make that world even more believable.

She was the only ungirdled girl to work on the main loom, the only one tall enough. The only one with the pattern-making mind, her mother said. The one one without a gemæcce.

The people who built these churches understood wood, and they were not in a hurry.

She could pretend it was enough to sit with a tablet weave between them, as women had for generations, and sometimes talk, sometimes fall into a half trance, mind floating free.

It was stitch-by-stitch work, following a plaid pattern. Child's play. It made her restless and impatient.

The girl looked at the only home she had known, the furniture she had built with her own hands, the beautiful bowl by the hearth as new as the day the smith made it, and at her mother, who sat as though made of stone facing the cooling hearth with her back to the entrance and to the girl.

This was the kind of work I understood. I knew where wood came from, that for every tree cut down, another was planted, that I could make a chair both functional and beautiful. I was adding to the world, not taking.

This is a craftsman cabin, built for my great-grandfather by masters, not one of the more usual settler's shacks made from whatever came to hand and which have long since rotted away, and good riddance." His smile was real this time. "You always have been a snob, Torvingen." "I like well-made things.

Hâtez-vous lentement, sans perdre courage. Vingt fois sur le métier, remettez votre ouvrage. Polissez-le sans cesse et le repolissez. Ajoutez quelquefois et souvent effacez.

He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write.

If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it.

What I adore is supreme professionalism. I'm bored by writers who can write only when it's raining.

Writing is rewriting... If you fall in love with the vision you want of your work and not your words, the rewriting will become easier.