Quotes About Craftsmanship

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

There is love in these old logs and in RJ's workmanship and I can feel it every time I walk inside. We call such a limited number of relationships love in our lives, but there is always love around us—it's as ubiquitous as oxygen. It lives in the houses where we've slept, the kitchens where we've cooked, in the food we've prepared for the people we love and in the walls we have shaped with our hands.

Happiness is German engineering, Italian cooking, and Belgian chocolate.

Murphy is a writer's best friend, but you have to keep an eye on him, or he'll steal the silver.

While writing the first draft is an exercise in shutting down all of the things we think we know so that the story features come tumbling out, the revision is the end of the joy ride. We pull on the gloves and sort of poke around inside the body. Is that a tumor? Will that limb need amputation? I nearly second-guessed myself into heart failure while learning to self-edit.

Creativity is the unseen magic that seeps out of a person's soul and touches whatever he or she crafts. Creativity is the glue that seals every newborn project with brilliance and flair. Creativity is an always inspiring, sometimes frightening, omnipresent and strangely powerful gift that's free for the capture.

No one goes around suggesting that everyone should become their own autonomous cheesemakers and cheering the death of the cheese industry. Why? Because that would result in a lot of shitty cheese.

When necessity demands it, I'm an excellent liar. Not the noblest of skills, but useful. It ties closely to acting and storytelling, and I learned all three from my father, who was a master craftsman.

There is something deeply satisfying in shaping something with your hands. Proper artificing is like a song made solid. It is an act of creation.

As they say, a jeweler knows the uncut gem. And I am. And she was. And so.

When I arrived, Kilvin was in the process of bending a twisted length of iron rod into what I could only assume was a more desirable shape.

It looked as if an alchemist had distilled a dozen swords, and when the crucible had cooled this was lying in the bottom: a sword in its pure form.

That's how they made them years ago, before metal strings, before they knew how to brace a long neck. It's incredible. There's more careful engineering in that swan neck than in any three cathedrals.

The old world and the emerging one served up in the brick and mortar of the artisan and the architects.

A lot of film people are like that– especially the ones below the line, the blue-collar guys, the grunts. They like putting their hands on the equipment and getting it to do things for them. It's not about art or ideas. It's about working at something and making it come out right.

knowing now that the job of writing was as much about removing words as adding them,

The doors of this House of God as well as the gate of its court, were all woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen.

Don't try to be original; just try to be good.

It is important to use your hands, that is what distinguishes you from a cow or a computer operator.

Don't try to be original, just try to be good.

I can't discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines. You can't discover that in the raw. ~ Leonard Cohen

Why is it every other person you meet says they're an artist? A real artist doesn't need to gas on about it, he doesn't have time. He does his work and sweats it out in silence, and no one can help him at all.

Real writing, I was beginning to realize, was more like laying bricks than waiting for lightning to strike. It was painstaking. It was manual labor. And sometimes, sometimes if you kept putting the bricks down and let your hands just go on bleeding, and didn't look up and didn't stop for anything, the lightning came. Not when you prayed for it, but when you did your work.

Do you know how they make the strongest sword? They hammer it flat then hold it to the fire.