Quotes About Craft

There's lots of incredible roles out there that I'd love to tackle, but there's a select group of actors I find myself gravitating towards, like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Sean Penn or Daniel Day-Lewis - real transformational actors.

I want to be tagged as an actor and not as a star.

In certain fight scenes in 'Raging Bull' - for example, the shorter ones - I literally just took the head and tail of the shot and put it together, and it all worked beautifully.

I think the reason for my fascination with craft is what it represents, what it means in our culture, what it means in our history and in humanity. It was the idea that you could go to your butcher to get something, you could go to your tailor to get this, and you could go to your cobbler to get that.

Every day is a good day above ground, and especially being able to play metal and being able to your craft and everything. You've gotta respect that, because it's something that can be taken away from you really quick.

Creative life should be more than preaching to the converted, more than going for a core audience of 100,000 people. It should be taking risks, challenging the readership and having enough faith in one's own talent and craft to take readers on that ride.

Actors in general have become very spoiled in the roles they choose these days. When I first started in this profession - about a hundred years ago in the last century - it was all about taking risks, it was about doing the job and honing the craft.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

There is only one school of literature - that of talent.

I was a guy who needed to go to class, because I had some raw talent that I thought was identifiable, when I finally made a decision to be an actor. And yet I wanted to learn how to really do the stuff. You know, 'How do I get to be a serious actor?'

This business is filled with really talented actors, and I'm sure there's a lot of guys out there who could have also brought something really special to the roles I have played. I just feel lucky that I get a chance to do them.

You need to understand that a skilled professional songwriter can accelerate your success as an already talented musician. These people are writing every single day, so their craft is really sharp, and it's the best songwriters who consistently get on the radio.

You know, I think Chris Nolan is an incredibly intelligent filmmaker, and I think Leonardo DiCaprio is an incredibly talented actor.

Bieber's so talented, he needs to just be himself and be by himself and work on his craft. He has a lot of people around; he has to find the right team to help him make something that's going to stand alone.

Both Aishwaryaa and Soundarya are talented and ambitious. They are both daughters of the Superstar and have great command over their craft.

Definitely for writing, what inspires me is poetry, which I have next to me all the time because I think they're doing what I'm doing, but much harder, more condensed. It's the same job, but they're more talented. All of them. So I just steal openly from them.

I think that New York is the city of all cities. There is so much diversity there. I also like that when I go there, I can catch a play or musical and see some of the most talented people practicing their craft.

One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don't realize there's a lot of craft behind the comedy.

If you've ever been around a group of actors, you've noticed, no doubt, that they can talk of nothing else under the sun but acting. It's exactly the same way with baseball players. Your heart must be in your work.

Everyone talks about the gags, but the most difficult thing is coming up with the stories. You have to learn to do that for sitcoms.

My sister Radha, who lives in the U.S., has discovered her craft in painting. She is by far the most beautiful among us sisters. If only Radha had been as tall as me, she'd have been the actor in the family.

The big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what's the right way to tell a particular story.

Success says, What more can I get? Craft says, Can you believe I get to do this?

A magician is a rule-of-thumb engineer.