Quotes About Craft

My father was an actor. Both of my older brothers are actors. My younger sister is an actress. For me, that's my job; that's my craft. But then all through school and through drama school, I was gigging and running nights and playing in bands, and I just didn't want to let that go.

If your only intent is to be seen, you'll never be seen. If your intent is to be happy, comfortable, genuine, and true in craft, you're destined to be noticed.

This is going to sound cheesy, but with acting there are so many tools. When you're on camera, you're using all of it. You're using the voice, you're using your body, you're using wardrobe, all of it, but it's funny, once you take all of those things away, you realize how much you rely on the physicality.

In film, you're always using your tools, your body, your voice, your emotions, but onstage, you use them in a different way.

Some actors are brilliant in David Mamet, but they would crash and burn in my plays and visa-versa. You either have my music in your body, or you don't.

There has to be that zeal to do something new and surprise yourself and audiences. You have to stay true to your craft, and that should never be sidelined.

I pick up a lot of stuff from them, but I don't think there's any great trick to acting.

I'm super happy to say that it's not that hard to write bad stand-up. I guess the trick is to write bad stand-up that sounds like you're trying to be good.

Actors know, with me they aren't going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.

The skills that we have are the actual magic skills - not the performing skills. We have to separate those. But the actual skills that make the tricks work, we don't get to use again.

I like to think of 'the studio' as a laboratory where I can go in, learn tricks, apply, revise, and release. I'd figure I had about the same emotional attachment to my craft as a guy over at NASA does over... NASA stuff.

Apprentice is the beginner - the first years you work in a craft in the European sense you are an apprentice. That takes 3 or 4 years. Then you are a journeyman. You can go from one master to another and learn other tricks and other secrets.

If you learn the craft, you can make a movie and get by with tricks.

I'm not a real producer, so if someone asks me to produce, it's only because they like my sound. I'm not a professional, all I have is my own way of doing things, my little tricks.

Do theater. Because you'll develop a craft that you'll always have. It'll give you a chance to really learn how to act and you won't go into the world with a few measly tricks that will only carry you so far.

The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks.

When you talk to an author - to any artist, really - you learn something about how they do what they do. I've never come away from that kind of experience feeling disillusioned, as if the magician had explained his tricks. I always find a greater appreciation for the form.

A good TV writer needs all the same tricks a good novelist has.

They were a very good form for me - the way a short story has to be designed in order to function, to get in everything it needs to - and they tend to be absolutely chock-a-block full of mechanisms and tricks that writers use to do the things they need to and have the effects they need to have.

You have to remember that you are part of a craft, and you are constantly building your craft. Ultimately, we are artists, so it comes from us. And I think the tricky thing about being an actor is that we're looking for someone else to give us something... Thinking like an artist and thinking like an out-of-work actor are two different things.

Singing is a tricky business so I sort of had to work at ir. But it's also sort of natural. That's my voice.

What I am used to is 'Gali Guleiyan,' and people talking about my performances, what new I have tried in terms of my craft or the skill of storytelling.

I did a brief stint with set design and stage design. And I tried playwriting, too.

I use these senses - touch, sight, feel and smell - as triggers that invite readers or propel them into the scene. The trick is not to make it obvious. I've written an entire chapter about this in my book, 'The Successful Novelist.' I've lectured about it extensively, but have yet to see many people pick up on it.