Quotes About Craft

'Billy on the Street' is a persona. It's crafted; it has writers. It's a mixture of performance art and comedy.

I take my craft seriously, of course, but I don't feel the need to always play a certain character or a certain part or persona. I'm not going to cut something out of my life because it's not 'my image.' I want to be open enough that if I love something, I can do it, and it will add to myself as an entertainer.

Why not collect and clean chicken wishbones in the run-up to Christmas, spray them silver and use each to pinch together a white hem-stitch napkin?

What are you doing?" "I'm darning a sock," he said, holding it up to show me. "What's that lump inside?" "A sock egg." "A sock egg? I didn't know socks hatched from eggs." "Only the best ones do. I can't wear the cheap kind, the ones that grow on trees. They give me blisters.

All really good writers use fragments.

I stare at him coldly. "I do not care for needlework." I pause. "Unless it involves the base of the skull.

The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.

I'm a pretty good drawer. I have trouble painting because you literally have to wait for the paint to dry. I'm disciplined, but I'm not patient.

Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write.

Billy Pilgrim music is very emotional. It's one part the craft we learned from people like the Indigo Girls and R.E.M., and one part the Tom Waits craft, where you're trying to create a moment.

I love to work. I know that sounds ridiculous to say because all people love to work, but I love the homework that goes into acting. I love figuring out different ways of playing a scene. I love the energy of being on set. I love not getting enough sleep because I have to wake up early in the morning.

It's a strange thing we do as actors. I'm walking out the door, and I'll say, 'O.K., honey, I'm off to take my clothes off.'

I'm pretty sure I became an actress solely because of craft services. When you're a kid and there's a lady walking around with a tray of chocolate and other free candy, that's the best reason to be in the industry!

I'm quite sure that all true professional artists, of every description, in all walks of life, whether their craft is painting, music, sculpture, medicine or anything, have one primary concern - mankind.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That's what Norman Mailer did. That's what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that's what I do - that's what I mean to do.

Just writing a lot doesn't necessarily make you a better writer. You have to hear yourself as a writer, and the best way to do that is to read your writing out loud.

I've been brewing my own beer with this ex-army bloke.

Learning lines is bloody boring.

I love acting. I just love it. It's in my bones.

Actors get bored.

Maybe I'll go to acting school. Acting is like boxing, you know.

I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff.

Acting is my life. It's what I live and breathe.

A brick layer, lays bricks... I'm an Actor, that's what I do.