Quotes About Craft

Strunk was born in 1869, and today's writers cannot base their craft exclusively on the advice of a man who developed his sense of style before the invention of the telephone (let alone the Internet), before the advent of modern linguistics and cognitive science, before the wave of informalization that swept the world in the second half of the twentieth century.

Much of the joy of writing comes from shopping from the hundreds of thousands of words that English makes available.

My job as an actor, and the part of my job that I love is the transforming-and-becoming aspect of it, and so it doesn't become about me anymore.

That's how I see myself as an actress. I may not be the best in the world, but I love my craft more than just about anything, and I will give everything I have to it, whatever the cost.

Independent film is for actors that love to act.

I love filmmaking, and I love the process. And I would rather do nothing else. It's a privilege to be able to paint such big pictures, so to speak.

I didn't want to be a movie star, I wanted to be an actor. Because acting is what I fell in love with, and acting is what is still challenging for me.

Write like you're in love. Edit like you're in charge.

You really can't explain how you do the things you do. I can't, anyway. I love certain actors, but sometimes they say the stupidest things about technique. I don't want to say something stupid.

I'm a songwriter, that's what I love.

If you want to be an actor, you have to do it because you love acting, not because you want to be a celebrity.

Acting is real important to me. I love it, and it's something I care about.

Real writers write because they love to write. They don't write for public acclaim.

I love writing. I don't claim to be great at it. Occasionally I get a good sentence off. But I love the activity.

Writing is so difficult. It's one of those things everyone thinks they can do, just because they can put together an email. But doing it well is another story.

Celebrity doesn't have anything to do with art or craft. It's about being rich and thinking that you're better than everybody else.

To be honest, I sort of feel like 'movie actor' isn't of this time. I love it. But it's a 20th-century art form.

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

flash of silver as the craft streaked laterally

It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.

The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.