Quotes About Craft

As an actor, you are in a unique position because you're not only memorizing dialogue but really embodying it. You naturally feel the rhythm of good writing.

Good writing is good writing, but that doesn't mean you can't orchestrate it or tweak it.

The basic laws of good acting are the same, but everything about the experience is different-your job responsibility, the time you spend on it.

Writing can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing.

To be a good writer... read a lot and write every day.

Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know.

That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing - from reading.

One of the great things about songwrighting; it's not an intellectual experience

There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.

Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

The great thing about the arts is that you can only learn to do it by doing it.

Ultimately, whether we are writing posts, paragraphs, essays, arguments, memoirs, monographs or even just the Great American Tweet, writing is and should be a grand adventure.

A great writer has all 4 - but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2.

Insofar as we, critics of the black tradition, master our craft, we serve both to preserve our own traditions and to shape their direction. All great writers demand great critics.

To be a great actor you just need to comprehend, so that's why I became a writer.

The best thing about acting is that I get to lose myself in another character and actually get paid for it... It's a great outlet. I'm not really sure who I am - it seems I change every day.

The growth that an artist seeks is a fine combination of mastering craft, garnering an audience, maintaining one's mental health, and working mightily from a ever-expanding base of experience.

These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story.

I think the toughest thing for me to figure out, as an actor, was how to translate all those layers that are in there and that history that the writers have done such a great job at forming.

When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.

Relax, don't worry, have a home brew.

I feel like my home is stage acting.

I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft.

If your intentions are pure, if you apply your craft with a view to observe humanity and, ultimately, God himself, very often something powerful will surface.