Quotes About Craft

A profession is the backbone of life.

If you are an artist, you learn how to trap the yearning and put it where you want it, put it where it goes. That's the secret all true artists come to know.

I never went to a writing school, so 'The Wire' was my writing school.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

In the past, people generally believed they could acquire magic in two ways: through learning the craft, either from another practitioner or from books; or through obtaining magic from a powerful being-think Faust or the classic, demonized witch, both of whom get their mojo from Satan.

Witches are the kind of more traditional, home and family, craft people - so they're the ones who are making things; crocheting shawls and things like that. But then they also have that slightly confident, dangerous, edge. I always see them as having very extreme hair, either amazingly beautiful straight hair or kind of wild.

Too many DJs today want to be the headline act without ever knowing what it takes to be the local DJ who's busting his or her gut to perfect their craft.

The Roswell incident, for instance, had over three hundred witnesses - some describing the bodies, some the craft, some the military procedures. Were they all perpetuating their own lives in a myth?

If a woman's aim is to become a singer, I would highly advise her to first develop her craft in songwriting. It's such a powerful tool to have when you're a singer.

Themes don't change very much in story telling, and I think each writer has his or her own territory; however, I think craft and style take a lot of time to develop. I don't think there's any other way to develop your own style without reading your betters.

There's so much to learn about acting and performance in general... I mean, acting is a very complex art, and there are a lot more theories and methods and techniques to it than I think anybody would think.

My theory is that everything an actor does, from the way he looks at his watch to the way he moves across the stage, is in the service of advancing a story, and in that sense, it's all writing. In that sense we, while acting, write.

You hear a lot of writers talk like writing is therapy or some kind of magic art, but it's a business.

I think people who are regarded as better actors must have better instincts because, at the end of the day, once they say 'action,' it's you who has to do it right. You can do all the research and preparation or none at all, but it's your instincts that tell you, 'No, I'll do it like this.'

If you're a songwriter, you have to do homework. You can exist for a while on the inspiration, but at some point, you have to sit down and have the discipline to write - to finish the poem, as they say.

The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

I don't work in a straight line. I don't write with an outline. I write where I can see things happen, and then things get glued together.

I write where I can see things happen, and then things get glued together. I do have the final scene, but that really is an epilogue. It's not part of the plot.

The cast you are working with is important because it involves a give-and-take relationship. For me, when you have strong performers, multiple things happen, the magic of creation happens. That's where you build the craft.

Everyone thinks acting is easy. It's far from easy, but it's the most gratifying thing I do.

I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.

The profession of the writer has its thorns about which the reader does not dream.

And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.

Roy Peter Clark