Quotes About Craft

Poet To mask the fiery thought, in simple words succeeds. For still the craft of genius is, To mask a king in weeds

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.

Writing can be described in two verbs: Throw up and clean up.

Second, writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course, is that.

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.

Between the five of us there was the strong bond of the sea, and also the fellowship of the craft, which no amount of enthusiasm for yatching, cruising, and so on can give, since one is only the amusement of life and the other is life itself.

Writing is the greatest thing that can happen to a human being. It's the best.

Fucking macramé knots were maybe harder than they looked.

Any well-written memoir is worth perusing with an eye to its structure.

One of your first tasks, then, is to ask yourself: why do I care about this? The answer will make you feel entitled to tell your own story—to accept that it is not only worthy of being written down but fit material for literature—something you want to revise and craft until it is beautiful.

Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it.

It is very seldom that one encounters what would appear to be sheer unadulterated evil in a human face; an evil, I mean, active, deliberate, deadly, dangerous. Folly, heedlessness, vanity, pride, craft, meanness, stupidity - yes. But even Iagos in this world are few, and devilry is as rare as witchcraft. ("Bad Company")

Early on, it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise, even if what you're writing about is not that relevant.

Anyone can write. Some people can write a bit better than others; they're called authors. Then there are some who can write better than authors; they're called artists.

Behind a little art there is a great artist.

Humanity could be clutching the frail barque of an outmoded world view while the wind of the mind is swaying the stars into very real craft, and out of them is coming… a faint call for help from a lady in a flowered dress.

You know, be an actor because you love to act. Don't be an actor because you think you're going to get famous, because that's luck.

It is really surprising what may be done in the home with a small can of paint, if you aren't careful.

At any point along that path, your job as an artist is to push craft to its limits — without being trapped by it. The trap is perfection: unless your work continually generates new and unresolved issues, there's no reason for your next work to be any different from the last.

For the artisan, craft is an end in itself. For you, the artist, craft is the vehicle for expressing your vision. Craft is the visible edge of art.

But while you may feel you're pretending that you're an artist, there's no way to pretend you're making art. Go ahead, try writing a story while pretending you're writing a story. Not possible.

But is the Mona Lisa really art? Well then, what about an undetectably perfect copy of the Mona Lisa? That comparison (however sneaky) points up the fact that it's surprisingly difficult, maybe even impossible, to view any single work in isolation and rule definitively, "This is art" or "This is craft." Striking that difference means comparing successive pieces made by the same person. In

Some people may be more gifted than others, but excellence in writing, as in any art form or craft, involves discipline and practice.

in the years ahead discover his métier as a writer, that enduring profession of skilled liars