#Craft Quotes

“Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word that he can spare.”

“A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.”

“What a labour writing is ... making one sentence do the work of a page; that's what I call hard work.”

“I've always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks - you learn craft, you learn structure, all that - as you go.”

“Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words.”

“When you do rap albums, you got to train yourself. You got to constantly be in character.”

“There is more fine abstract design in Navajo rugs than in all these modern paintings.”

“Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler.”

“The art that is in the machine-made article, appeals only to the eye; the art in Khadi appeals first to the heart and then to the eye.”

“There is a fine line I have to walk throughout the writing process in a novel. It is this line between drama and melodrama, and it is this line between evoking genuine emotional power and being manipulative.”

“Putting down on paper what you have to say is an important part of writing, but the words and ideas have to be shaped and cleaned, cleaned as severely as a dog cleans a bone, cleaned until there's not a shred of anything superfluous.”

“A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.”

“Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.”

“I think most micro-brewers/craft-brewers are similar in that they enjoy making something themselves and at the end of the day they can enjoy the fruit of their labor. Most people really enjoy the process of making beer and like the industry as a whole. We often are passionate about what we do and enjoy talking to people about the art and science of making beer.”

“I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.”

“A poet's interest in craft never fades, of course.”

“I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem.”

“If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.”

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”

“I'm only as good as my last word, my last hook, my last bridge.”

“I probably spent more time listening to albums than writing songs. But I think that gave me all the tricks in terms of wordplay, from how I pronounced my words to the actual delivery.”

“My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.”

“A carpenter is known by his chips.”

“You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate.”

“Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.”

“I will try not to panic, to keep my standard of living modest and to work steadily, even shyly, in the spirit of those medieval carvers who so fondly sculpted the undersides of choir seats.”

“Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.”

“Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.”

“My attempt has been really to, beyond making a record of contemporary life, which is what you inevitably do, is trying to make beautiful books - books that are in some way beautiful, that are models of how to use the language, models of honest feeling, models of care.”

“If you're going to have a complicated story you must work to a map; otherwise you'll never make a map of it afterwards.”

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”

“Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.”

“If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.”

“Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.”

“I don't know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it's true. We aren't satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams.”

“Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.”

“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.”

“Easy writing makes hard reading.”

“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.”

“It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”

“Writing simply means no dependent clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it vital and alive.... Virtually every page is a cliffhanger--you've got to force them to turn it."~”

“It was never my dream to be famous. I didn't start acting to be a movie star. I started in the theater and my desire was to get better at my craft. It's still my desire. I don't consider myself a movie star, nor do I really have the desire to be one. I'm just an entertainer. An actor who works hard at his craft. Whatever labels people give me, that's not really me or part of my process.”

“I try to encourage actors to work harder off screen because that's where you find things.”

“[Saniyya Sidney] was very serious about her work and her craft, and she wanted to be good, and she wanted to work on it. So I said, "Ok." It was as simple as that. She was just right. She just has it.”

“It's simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they're done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it's what they see. That's where my head is at.”

“There are two kinds of actors -- one sits in a dressing room waiting for his call and the other gets out into the business and polishes his craft by absorbing everything. I don't know enough, I'll never learn everything I need to learn. When a guy thinks he's already learned it, he can only go backwards.”

“When an artist is in the strict sense working, he of course takes into account the existing tastes, interests and capacity of his audience. These no less than the language , the marble, the paint, are part of his aw material.; to be used, tamed, sublimated, not ignored or defied. Haughty indifference to them is not genius, it is laziness and incompetence.”