Quotes About Craft

She'd be doing it strictly out of love for the craft—not for the claps that came with.

My joy is in the craft, not the gain.

it closed, created a clasp from willow twigs that he'd soaked to soften and

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

As part of Rockefeller's silent craft and habit of extended premeditation, he never tipped off his adversaries to his plans for revenge, preferring to spring his reprisals on them.

Hemingway said write first and then take out all the good stuff and what's left is story. (By "good stuff" Hemingway meant all the material that the author has fallen in love with—not everything that was proper for the story.)

La novela es el único territorio literario en el que reina la misma imprecisión y desmesura que en la existencia humana. Es un género sucio, híbrido, alborotado. Escribir novelas es un oficio que carece de glamour; somos los obreros de la literatura y tenemos que colocar ladrillo tras ladrillo, mancharnos las manos y baldarnos la espalda del esfuerzo para levantar una humilde pared de palabras que a lo peor luego se nos derrumba.

Here was a new craft that a man could tuck away in his head and by the look of the large wide world unfolding itself before him, it seemed that the more a man knew the better for him.

It was as if my soul had become one of those limestone figures on the west front of our cathedral and some restorer, incompetent at his craft, was chipping away at it with a sharp tool flaying its surface and splintering off those soft perceptive parts so that at last only a plain featureless nothing would remain.

Such is the strength of art, rough things to shape.

Stories are hard. I have friends who knock out stories on a weekly or monthly basis, like they're running on medicinal-strength Updike. But for me a story is as daunting a prospect as a novel.

The strength of British theatre should be that these actors in their middle years know what they're doing and are good at it. Not rich, not famous, but making a living.

Three Rules for Literary Success: 1. Read a lot. 2. Write a lot. 3. Read a lot more, write a lot more.

Success and the art of making music are two different things for me.

In the creative arts you draw a special power. The discipline required is awesome to be an actor or an actress, to be really good, not just another one waiting tables.

The craft was dangerous and unpredictable, and witches were difficult to control, for they had minds of their own and didn't hold to keeping to the law.

Every stitch i sew will be a kiss.

We don't think about recipes as much as we perform them.

I tell writers not to think about writing short stories or novels. Just write one good scene. And then a novel becomes a bunch of good scenes stacked on top of each other.

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

Lawrence Block called Telling Lies for Fun and Profit

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I don't personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'