Quotes About Craft

That's the fundamental flaw in the illusion that writers like to maintain, the idea that we can craft anything approaching the truth. No matter how richly we imagine, no matter how vividly we set the scene, we never come close to the unambiguous realness of the moment itself.

Humour is a fine line to walk in poetry, as in fiction. I just think it's harder to write. It's harder to keep the respect of the reader too.

Writing is like sausage making in my view; you'll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what's gone into it.

the bobbin of wool would rise and fall, twisting like a top, her fingers busy unravelling and plucking, and her drooping mouth with its hedge of broken and discoloured teeth wide open as she sang, loudly and harshly, but with great vigour. It was from Agathi that I learned some of the most beautiful and haunting of the peasant songs.

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.

The practice of medicine is a thinker's art, the practice of surgery a plumber's.

No one can any longer write in the fat style of Strauss. That was killed by Stravinsky. He stripped the body of much of its clothes. Music is the craft of building structures with sound and that is what Stravinsky represents.

Poetry is a mug's game.

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami.

My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle.

To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.

The business of writing is one of the four or five most private things in the world.

(Writing) - the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

You praise the firm restraint with which they write - I'm with you, there, of course: They use the snaffle and the curb all right, But where's the bloody horse?

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.

Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones.

Art is progressive; the more you do it, the better you get. I defy anyone to write fifteen short stories and not have story #15 be at least marginally better than story #1. It's simply not possible. Setting a date-certain for surrender often results in giving up just as you're starting to get good at your craft.

writing is as much a state of mind as it is a profession

Fine." Desjani sighed. "Admiral, I recommend we get our intelligence officer up here to see if he can craft lovely poems for the singing spider wolves.

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium. — HENRI MATISSE

There are a number of writers who believe it is their duty to throw as many curve balls at the reader as possible. To twist and twist again. These are the Chubby Checkers of crime fiction and, while I admire the craft, I think that it can actually work against genuine suspense.

My favorite songwriting trick is writing something like 'XO.' In my brain, I thought, 'This is probably going to be a love song. How can I change that and find ways to twist that.' As a songwriter, it's your job for the song to take twists and turns that people don't expect.