Quotes About Craftsmanship

Natural selection is an inanimate process, devoid of consciousness, yet is a tireless refiner, an ingenious craftsman.

No creo en la literatura como dietario, como diario de vida, como crónica personal; yo creo en la literatura como literatura, como un mecanismo, como una máquina autosuficiente, al menos con una autosuficiencia grande.

Los buenos escritores necesitan a los malos escritores aunque sólo sea como lectores o como escuderos.

The novel is an imperfect art. It may be the most imperfect of all literary arts. And the more pages you write, the more possibility there is of revealing imperfections...It isn't the same to build a house as it is to build a skyscraper. Often a house is cozier, but to build a skyscraper you have to be very good.

To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.

Sharpening your knife is never a waste of time.

Custom curtains made with a lovely Schumacher fabric that she'd used for the headboard.

Craftsmanship isn't like water in an earthen pot, to be taken out by the dipperful until it's empty. No, the more drawn out the more remains.

I have the sword I fashioned,' Taran proudly cried, 'the cloak I wove, and the bowl I shaped. And the friendship of those in the fairest land of Prydain. No man can find greater treasure.

Artist?" Thomas suggested. "That's a word. I've never heard anyone say it, but I've read it in some of the books. It means, well, someone who is able to make something beautiful. Would that be the word?

Maybe it is something that artists have," she said, liking the sound of the word she had just learned. "A special kind of magic knowledge.

Artist?' Thomas suggested. 'That's a word. I've never heard anyone say it, but I've read it in some of the books. It means, well, someone who makes something beautiful. Would that be a word?

Yes, she dyes the threads and then she makes pictures from them. No one else can do it. She has like a magic touch, they say. And they want her for that." "She would be honored in Village.

Todos nosotros, cada uno, somos nuestras obras; al final de nuestras vidas presentamos nuestra alma a nuestro patrón como un artesano presenta el trabajo de sus manos.

His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman's hands. Or maybe she hadn't been patient. Maybe she'd been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.

We are all of us, every one, our own works; we present our souls to our Patrons at the ends of our lives as an artisan presents the works of his hands.

She liked her pieces to have something from every time of day in them — she didn't trust things written in the morning only — so she reread and rewrote painstakingly. No part of a day — its moods, its light — was allowed to dominate. She hung on to a piece for a year sometimes, revising at all hours, until the entirety of a day had registered there.

I've written all these stories without any pornography, without any obscenity. I grew up among sailors and miners and lumberjacks and the roughest kind men in the world, but I never found it necessary to use all that in the stories. I can make them real without that. I think much of that kind of writing is a coverup for lack of real skill.

Men have passed on the knowledge of how to mix cement, lay brick, splice a line, navigate a ship, make steel, and dozens of other crafts, yet in politics, statecraft, and social relationships we continue to repeat old mistakes.

The Indian must not lose pride in what he does, in his handicraft, for if he loses pride he will no longer build, his art will fail him, and he will completely be dependent upon others.

Sadly, in these rush-rush, hurry-hurry days, not too many young people study the art of paper clip bending. There are only a handful of master benders left in the whole world. And who knows, in ten or twenty years there might not be any. Everyone will have to switch to staples.

Let's imagine how we might grow as writers if we work in a slow writing way rather than rushing through our work trying to accumulate a pile of pages. Just imagine what we might gain from being writers who move slowly through our work and slowly through our lives.

but also for the sweater most expertly knitted from hand-spun wool

Antony was neat-fingered and had obviously done this thing many times before, but still indulged in a good deal of cursing and bad language before the new bow and a few arrows were finally done.