Quotes About Craft

In the 'Odyssey,' Homer enumerates the strangers that even a simple community would "call from abroad"- the "master of some craft, a prophet, a healer of disease, a builder or else a wondrous bard." In contrast to the original peasants and chiefs these are the new inhabitants of the city. Where they were lacking, the country town remained sunk in a somnolent provincialism.

I urge aspiring writers to write three full-length novels before contemplating publication.

The cooking profession, while it's a noble craft and a noble calling, 'cause you're doing something useful - you're feeding people, you're nurturing them, you're providing sustenance - it was never pure.

I think it is probably more important to attend specialized conventions for a journeyman writer than any other, but it's useful at all stages of a career, if for nothing else, to find out how the industry is working at any given time.

I think journalism is useful training for a writer in the way it takes the preciousness out of the pragmatic side of the craft.

John Edgar Park introduced me to the gentle art of recreational lock-picking. It's fun and potentially useful to know how to tickle tumblers in the right way to open door locks and padlocks.

Acting has been very useful to me.

For me, writing is a job. I do not separate the work from the act of writing like two things that have nothing to do with each other. I arrange words one after another, or one in front of another, to tell a story, to say something that I consider important or useful, or at least important or useful to me.

I think it's an actor's job, if you can, to keep working and to keep using that muscle. First of all, you've got to pay the bills, but it also helps you develop.

It takes great skill to tell a compelling story in under 60 seconds. These five directors have mastered the format, using their talent, craft and imagination to provide us with some of the most innovative filmmaking out there today.

Writing is far too hard work to say what someone else wants me to. Serving it as a craft, using it as a way of growing in my own understanding, seems to me to be a beautiful way to live. And if that product is shareable with other people, so much the better.

I believe that the performance of my actors is of utmost importance to make a good film.

Absolutely not, because in acting I've found a domain that suits me perfectly. And that is so utterly rare.

The whole point of being an actor is to get satisfaction out of a role - unless you're just vain about celebrity. You're always looking for the one thing that will surprise you.

It's a vain craft, acting.

A good actor always sets you straight. If you've written a false moment and thought it was probably pretty great, the actor's gonna show you when he gets to that moment. They're the great test of the validity of the material.

Serious films for grown-ups - 'Michael Clayton,' 'In the Valley of Elah,' 'A Mighty Heart' - these are big Hollywood films, but they have substance and craft and really beautiful performances.

Many writers can't make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don't really know about its value to the student. I don't mean it's useless. But I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write.

Working with those versed in the Mystical Arts was sometimes like trying to knit with wet spaghetti: just when you thought you'd gotten somewhere, it all came to pieces in your hands.

Most people thought you just waved your hands and sim-sallah-bim, but it was a lot more complex than that. Sorcery was not so much doing what you wanted to do but doing what you could do—or ingeniously finding a way around the physical limitations of the craft.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

The knack is art.

La mano y la vista hacen al artista.

Figurábanse que yo podía escribir por oficio, como los demás literatos, cuando jamás he sabido escribir sino movido por la pasión