Quotes About Craft

The imagination is part of the arsenal that actors draw from.

Hollywood is something imagined... acting is something crafted.

It took me a long time to know enough about writing to really write short stories. You can't just immerse yourself, as you do in a novel, and see where everything goes. Novels are a very flexible, accommodating form. Short stories aren't.

Sometimes, as an actor, you're so deeply immersed in a part that you lose control of it. If you're really lucky, a few times in your life it'll take you somewhere you never expected to go. It really blows the top off your understanding of your craft.

Hal Holbrook was in one of my first television movies when I was about 18 or 19. He'd made such a strong impression on me and a lasting one in terms of what being an actor was.

Improv is a very big thing for me. The thing with actors is I do not understand at all how they do what they do. I'm fascinated by it, and I have such a respect for it.

Abhishek Chaubey has improved my craft, as I learnt so much on set.

I believe that I improve with every book I write - most writers will probably tell you the same thing. I'm still learning my craft and will be until the day I drop dead at my computer. In my opinion, art isn't something that can be perfected. There's always room for improvement.

In the end, I'm an actor. I'm paid for what I bring to the screen.

I am inclined to acting. I like to act and I like being an actor.

Once the writers got to know the actors, they would include certain things - personality-wise - for the characters because they knew you liked that sort of thing.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft, and how a craft can be master of an element. I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup. I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know -- that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it.

For many years, biographers and scholars, beginning with her great nephew James Austen-Leigh, presented her as a quiet, reserved, proper woman, but one has only to read her novels to realize that she was nothing so bland. Her genius, her craft, and her timeless prose are no secret, but thanks to Cassandra's scissors, most other aspects of her life will probably remain a mystery.

But in my experience, a writer gravitates toward a certain form or genre because, like a well-made jacket, it suits him.

For the writer who truly loves language, a trip to the copy editor is like a week at a spa. You come out looking younger, trimmer, and standing straighter.

There is a necessary gestation period during which a writer should protect his work, because the minute he sends it out, or joins a writing group, or enrolls in an MFA program, he engages the part of himself that is focused on the result more than the work. For

Life is like cooking your masterpiece recipe. You have to get the right ingredients, have the right mixture and the right cooking time to the PERFECT and DELICIOUS TASTE of your craft.

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.

Dramatic art in her opinion is knowing how to fill a sweater.

And we turned off and 30 miles south they're standing in the middle of our road blocking our way, stopped the car, got out, took us through the path in the woods, where the craft was on the ground.

There's no mystique to acting. It's only common sense - and a bit of courage.

Hairdressing in general hasn't been given the kudos it deserves. It's not recognised by enough people as a worthy craft.

Early inspirations included Michael Jackson, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Lionel Richie... Those were the people I actually wound up studying just to hone my craft.