Quotes About Craft

The materials I use are absolutely essential to the work I make.

Painting is manual labor, no different from any other; it can be done well or poorly.

An actor only has his own understanding and experience to work with.

I've been aware of the work I do as an actor being directorial in feel.

The wonderful thing about acting is that you can use all of your talents and interests in your work.

To be sure, a good work of art can and will have moral consequences, but to demand of the artists moral intentions, means ruiningtheir craft.

Robert DeNiro, who may be the greatest living actor, usually acts in a way which is very stone-faced, like Steve McQueen.

I thought we would have at most an audience of 5,000 devotees because I made the decision to stick to craft, not to gossip, not to be interested in any of the juicy stuff that they talk about on other shows, but stick to the question of craft.

What I didn't know that by sticking to craft we would blow open some doors that I never saw opened before.

It wasn't stone. It wasn't welded steel. It wasn't traditional sculpture. They thought it was craft, or something else, but not art. They couldn't define it in the early Fifties when I was starting out.

I've always really respected directors. As much as I was interested in acting, whenever I watched a film, it was always the directing that really stood out to me.

No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce.

The great film editor is not a cutter, he's a storyteller, right?

I'm a storyteller. If I have that on my precis when I go, 'Storyteller,' I'm satisfied with that.

I'm a director's actor; I'm a storyteller's actor.

When you make work, your goal might not be first and foremost to have as many people as possible see it, but it might be more about honing your craft as a storyteller or making art, but, there's no doubt about it, you want lots of people to see it.

I've always been a writer, I've always been a storyteller, but I never thought about screenwriting.

In a lot of ways, TV writing taught me how to be a good storyteller. I learned about dialogue, scenes, moving the plot forward.

I am a storyteller by trade.

I would say, A, you can't really teach anyone how to write good characters, because it's something you have to teach yourself or already have innately in you as a storyteller, and, B, coming up with a good screenplay is a very, very small fraction of what it takes to be a good screenwriter.

I think storytelling is a thing of beauty, and also very difficult. It's a craft you have to continue to work at.

I don't assume, because I can write screenplays, that I know how to write a novel. It's a very different world. There's a craft involved in storytelling, and it's a different kind of craft. But yes, someday I will do that. It just might be awhile.

I went to a seminar early in my career on the craft of storytelling by Robert McKee. It was really life altering. There are basic principles on how to craft an engaging story and he covers them well. He's got a book out, 'Story,' that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in improve their storytelling.

I've committed myself to perfecting the art of the straight man. I try really hard not to crack up.