Quotes About Craft

For additional wisdom from this master of the craft, read The Successful Novelist and visit the writing section of his website at davidmorrell.net.

Today's "fully developed scene," consequently, tends to run shorter than it once did. You may encounter scene situations where you simply can't develop all the complex immediate issues in fewer than a dozen pages. If so, that's fine. But I suspect that the average, "developed" print-fiction scene today runs between four and six pages, and some are shorter than that.

A poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer.

Screenwriters? Schmucks with Underwoods.

Advertising is a craft executed by people who aspire to be artists, but is assessed by those who aspire to be scientists. I cannot imagine any human relationship more perfectly designed to produce total mayhem."13

Advertising is a craft executed by people who aspire to be artists, but is assessed by those who aspire to be scientists. I cannot imagine any human relationship more perfectly designed to produce total mayhem

Color these fish. Cut them out. Punch a hole in the top of each fish. Put a ribbon through all the holes. Tie these fish together. Now read what is written on these fish: Jesus is a friend. Jesus gathers friends. I am a friend of Jesus.

We also know that evolution crafted all life on the planet with natural selection and that we can capture the way it works with mathematics, distilling its essence into the form of equations.

Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung.

When sculptors shape their stone, they shape it after him.

Writing is a manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

There is little I like more than a steam tray full of breakfast sausages - ask anyone - and craft services is very good on this account.

If (a writer) has applied himself to an art for 15 or 20 years and they've gotten good at it, and they're expected to do something else to support themselves while the industry that sells this craft supports itself very well, something is badly wrong. Morally wrong.

No, it's never easier. The new book doesn't know the first four were ever written.

The armoury of having any academic education does not necessarily set you up for being a good or better actor.

You know, comedy's hard. With drama, you have a responsibility to the emotional truth, but with comedy, you have emotional truth and you have technique on top of it.

I don't think there's much point in putting me a deep, dark, heavy, emotional film because there are people who do it so much better than I do.

The more you are blessed with experience, the fuller and the more enriched you are in your craft.

Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.

Do not fall into the error of the artist who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience - twenty times.

Acting is not a mystery. There's nothing that I know that other actors don't know. We all act, we're all actors, we all know the same thing. The only thing that separates us is experience.

Language is the writer's only tool - we really don't have anything else - but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.

I like directors who have worked as actors. They know the experience.

Racist writing is a craft failure.