Quotes About Craft

That's the thing with good poets. They structure and decide and re-write and insert, but some of the magic comes from the place beyond intention. It just falls from them like windfall fruit.

Get black on white.

I knew I must write a novel. But it seemed an impossible thing to do when I had been trying with great difficulty to write paragraphs that would be the distillation of what made a novel. It was necessary to write longer stories now as you would train for a longer race.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

When the major studios flourished many years ago, an actor was groomed, developed, and worked frequently at his craft. The studios really took care of their actors.

Before I did any television or film, I did years and years of theater. Television and film stuff, even though it went on for a good, healthy number of years, almost felt like a diversion from theater.

It's all about learning your craft and honing it in and really paying attention to people who are doing it and what their advice is. It's like anything: it takes years and years and years. A lot of it comes down to work ethic.

I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.

I think the first thing is don't give up. If you love the craft. If you love being a detective and discovering who a character is and the detail of how they walk and what kind of shoes they wear and what did they do yesterday and what's important to them. I definitely advise actors to learn about the craft.

When you're in comedy, people always come up and say, 'Oh, it must be so hard.' It really isn't hard unless you're not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.

Tell a story. You don't have to do a thousand things in two minutes when you can do one just as good and still tell that story with your face or how you land or your reaction. That's a lost art. Storytelling is a big part of our industry, and if given time, you can do it properly.

On the 'Star,' you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time.

I think it's a shame when you come across young actors and musicians who haven't had the time to learn their craft. It doesn't matter if it's acting or music; you really have to learn how to do it from the bottom up because unless you have a great work ethic... fame is a terrible thing to have.

I feel bad for young actors who become huge stars too quickly, because you haven't had a chance to practice your craft a lot.

Most actors nowadays are models turned actors. That's why a lot of young actors are terrible. You have to learn how to act. It is not something that you can just do.

See, the thing that bothers me with young actors, young actors of color specifically, is that they see movies and television, and they figure that's all it is to it. They have no respect for the craft. They want to be, you know, movie stars or whatever. And I worry that we're losing a certain quality, you know?

I'm baffled when young actors aren't familiar with current film, television and theater, or aren't interested in older films or plays and the history of the craft in general. If you don't know what's out there, and what came before, then how can you picture yourself working, and how can anyone else?

Experimenting is part of the process. I remember when I was younger, I spent a whole year just writing on straight trap beats because I just wanted to be able to do that at a high level. So it's about perfecting your craft in every way.

I travel a lot, and I hunt for fabrics, then I have the tailor make me something.

I took on the math-intensive art form of holography and, in my early 20s, traveled the world, living on university fellowships to pursue this esoteric craft. I didn't date much, really - perhaps because I didn't have many hormones, though I didn't know that at the time.

People think acting is just memorizing lines and doing facial expressions. No it's about traveling along a path of discovery, intention and connection.

It is a distinct and an honor to work with the august Regina King. I would call her Queen King. This woman is one of our treasures. She's an actor's actor. She has craft to burn. She's a craftsman who knows what she is doing, and she's got soul.