The Craft Quotes

#1. But really important, perhaps most important is the craft; how you make your record, the creation of these sonic worlds you want your listener to hear.

Duncan Sheik

#2. Records have never really been my strong suit. I've always been a much better live act. I didn't understand the language of the studio. You sing differently in a studio. The language, the craft - it's just a whole different deal. I avoided the problem on my first record by doing a live album.

Jewel

#3. I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn't love them.

Jerry Seinfeld

#4. The craft of writing is the art of penetrating other minds with the figures that are in your own mind.

John Steinbeck

#5. I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read

Stephen King

#6. Fashion is so mass-produced now; I hope there will come a refocus on how people see couture. And I would also hope for a new focus on the craft.

Raf Simons

#7. It's true that Apollo 10's lander was overweight. Late in the craft's development, it became clear that its ballooning weight was endangering the whole mission.

Henry Spencer

#8. She had made these with scrap wire and tools from the craft supply depot, and called them Occupations of Uninhabited Space.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#9. I started doing comedy because that was the only stage that I could find. It was the pure idea of being on stage. That was the only thing that interested me, along with learning the craft and working, and just being in productions with people.

Robin Williams

#10. As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.

Alberto Manguel

#11. A lot of people just love music, especially a lot of aspiring artists. They just want to jump in and start making music. They don't really take time to grow and appreciate the craft.

LeCrae

#12. We of the craft are all crazy.

Lord Byron

#13. There's a difference between the 'art' of writing and the 'craft' of writing. Art is subjective, its beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, but craft is objective. There is a right way and a wrong way to craft.

Gerard De Marigny

#14. The Roswell incident, for instance, had over three hundred witnesses - some describing the bodies, some the craft, some the military procedures. Were they all perpetuating their own lives in a myth?

Dwight Schultz

#15. Do your homework, study the craft, believe in yourself, and out-work everyone.

Justin Hires

#16. The fact that I still find so much beauty in a handicraft is because my mother taught us to see not just the craft as a product but the craft as an embodiment of human creativity and human labor.

Vandana Shiva

#17. My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.

Gerald Durrell

#18. The rough and ready improvisational quality to life on board the International Space Station is reminiscent of a long trip in a sailboat: privacy and fresh produce are in short supply, hygiene is basic, and a fair amount of the crew's time is spent just on maintaining and repairing the craft.

Chris Hadfield

#19. If you want to learn the craft of war, ponder over this book. The teacher is as a needle, the disciple is as thread. You must practice constantly.

Miyamoto Musashi

#20. At festivals you kind of have to play the game a bit and you have to play a lot of the big bangers but it's to me it's extra gratifying to be able to play the non-bangers and make it work. Because that's still the craft of the DJ, I think.

A-Trak

#21. The craft of a master is not imposing dominance, but winning submission.

Ann Somerville

#22. By the time I was twenty-three, I'd given up any thought of becoming a fiction writer, and I didn't return to the craft for over two decades. But, at the age of forty-five, return I did.

Eric Flint

#23. I love the craft of acting, I love learning, I love everything that comes with the new project; the whole process is totally intoxicating to me.

Annette Bening

#24. What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king.

Robert E. Howard

#25. She'd be doing it strictly out of love for the craft - not for the claps that came with.

Lisi Harrison

#26. I really wasn't equipped to be a writer when I left Oxford. But then I set out to learn. I've always had the highest regard for the craft. I've always felt it was work.

V.S. Naipaul

#27. If I don't sell any copies of my books/apps or if I sell a million copies, I'm still going to continue making them. I create because I'm passionate about the craft, making money was never the motivation.

Greg Pugh

#28. Stephen King is open about the fact that he continues to learn the craft, and if King hasn't got it figured out yet, what the hell hope have the rest of us got?

Marcus Sakey

#29. In The Craft the clockwork God of Newtonian determinism has been replaced by the quantum-aware Great Architect who is ready and willing to allow us to contribute to His malleable Plan for the cosmos.

Robert Lomas

#30. I bring my dogs on set with me, and my little dog Karoo is smart as a whip. She knows where the craft-services food tables are, so anytime I can't find her, I know she has found her way to that area. She's a funny dog.

Hilary Swank

#31. A true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship.

William Shatner

#32. The craft with which the world is made runs also into the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which Nature has taken to heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#33. Bad improv happens with people who are inexperienced with each other and don't know the craft that well. But bad stand-up is something that could happen to someone at any level in their career.

Kristen Schaal

#34. I love books where I can't wait to turn every page, songs that grab me the first time I hear them, and films that make me totally forget about the craft because I am totally engaged in the story.

John Grooters

#35. Jessica DuLong's elegantly written "My River Chronicles" brings the past of the Hudson River into the vivid present, and carries forward the craft of literary non-fiction with grace and energy.

Gay Talese

#36. The industry is littered with self-styled purists who believe the business of media.. the requirement to make a profit.. somehow corrupts the craft.

Lachlan Murdoch

#37. In France, we don't yet have the craft that American TV does or big studios like Paramount. It was so cool going through those famous gates when you have your own little pass and picture on it. Woo hoo, I'm going to work!

Lizzie Brochere

#38. I am nervous that the craft of songwriting is taking a nose dive ... And since I'm a songwriter and I connect with an interpretative, you know, interpretation of a song, I miss it. I just miss it.

Barry Manilow

#39. Theatre is done largely for the love of the craft. Television makes you famous. And films immortalize you. That's the relationship between the three.

Kabir Bedi

#40. An unedited manuscript is a first draft of story; but is not a finished product. Too many writers study the craft of writing but do not acquire the skills of an editor.

Michael J. Kannengieser

#41. I know some really great actors who are pretty judgmental people, pretty critical people. But they're great actors. When they're acting, that's the craft.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

#42. I wanted to be the best actor possible. I worked very hard at the craft of it.

Jack Nicholson

#43. I'm really proud to have been in The Craft. I will always be that chick from The Craft, no matter what I do.

Robin Tunney

#44. First of all, just because the Tea Party people appear to be generally uneducated, ignorant about the political process, ignorant about economics, confused about their own platform from the beginning, and indelicate when it comes to the craft of diplomacy, doesn't mean they're wrong.

Steven Van Zandt

#45. I started growing roses. I enjoyed the craft of it and that they're difficult to look after; they can provide joy.

Yannis Philippakis

#46. It's all over you when you say his name. Like glitter or something. You can't ever get that shit off. Glitter is the herpes of the craft world.

Leta Blake

#47. I'm 19 years old. I think I'm doing a pretty good job ... Basically from my heart I really just want to say it really should be about to music. It should be about the craft that I'm making. This is not a gimmick and I'm an artist and I should be taken seriously.

Justin Bieber

#48. Being the actors of the craft, the trade, one of the big things you do and you learn is about repeating. There is something to the repeats. I think that is part of what is healthy to young actors. Get out and learn something just through doing that, repeating.

Al Pacino

#49. When you're a writer, you have to have the passion and the skill and the craft. It's not just enough to have the passion. You've gotta have all three.

Harlan Ellison

#50. Imaginative writing has always been a solitary and indeed a somewhat antisocial activity. Apprenticeship existed, no doubt, but it was an apprenticeship to books and not to living masters of the craft.

Madison Smartt Bell

#51. You either create something and you keep it a secret and you die with it, or you can benefit the craft.

Vidal Sassoon

#52. I don't see any difference in the craft of acting, in film or television. It's absolutely the same. It's different storytelling, playing a character over multiple hours, as opposed to two.

David Duchovny

#53. Every flying machine has its own unique characteristics, some good, some not so good. Pilots naturally fly the craft in such a manner as to take advantage of its good characteristics and avoid the areas where it is not so good.

Neil Armstrong

#54. I think journalism is useful training for a writer in the way it takes the preciousness out of the pragmatic side of the craft.

Kevin Barry

#55. I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style.

Douglas Sirk

#56. They came out over the highway and they stopped and that's when Barney got out, with the binoculars to try and identify the craft. I mean, he'd been in the military in World War Two, he's puzzled.

Betty Hill

#57. In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

Lauren Groff

#58. Look, I come from vaudeville, I come from burlesque, I come from heartaches, I come from sadness, I come from gladness, I come from work and sweat and respect for the craft.

Mickey Rooney

#59. It's the word 'artful'; it's such a great word, with its dark and its light side, its art and its cunning, the craft and the crafty of it - I've been preoccupied with the word 'artful' and the twin notions of 'cornucopia' and 'pickpocket' it suggests for quite some time.

Ali Smith

#60. There are as many routes to writing success as there are writers who got there. My advice, however, applies across the board: read widely, learn the craft by whatever means you can - workshops and writing programs are ideal, but even self-study can work - apply what you learn, and persevere.

Therese Fowler

#61. Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft. If you want to write, practice writing.

Ann Patchett

#62. I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.

David Ogilvy

#63. I saw a fleet of fishing boats ... I flew down almost touching the craft and yelled at them, asking if I was on the right road to Ireland. They just stared. Maybe they didn't hear me. Maybe I didn't hear them. Or maybe they thought I was just a crazy fool.

Charles Lindbergh

#64. I started working on stage as a dancer when I was four; by 14 or 15, I knew I wanted to study the craft of acting.

Cush Jumbo

#65. The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

Hippocrates

#66. I've always thought that a lot of really good writers go wrong by getting so into the craft and the technique and perfection. Perfection can be the enemy sometimes. Some songs don't need to be told perfectly. Life is messy and has loose ends, and sometimes I think the songs should reflect that.

Patterson Hood

#67. Poetry for me is a result of lyrical meditation, pre-verbal in origin, and much of the craft has to do with finding a contemporary diction that embodies, at times subverts but never betrays that pre-verbal lyrical source: the presence of song before it is sung.

John Allison

#68. She spent hours drawing on her own, trying to perfect her craft. And when she got into music, she had that same diligence in developing her own style as well as perfecting the craft of singing. I don't think that is part of the normal assumption of who sh

Laura Joplin

#69. Writing is not necessarily in the planning but about learning the craft of letting the imagination change that plan

Mark Draycott Author

#70. Strategy is the craft of the warrior.

Miyamoto Musashi

#71. All the craft skills that I have, I feel like I developed and honed in drama school. It's the most important thing for me.

Andre Holland

#72. It didn't have to be a newfound respect for the craft, I knew that it's notoriously difficult and frightens a lot of people off. I don't think anyone knows quite who to attribute it to, but the dying actor who says: "dying is easy, comedy is hard." I hear it.

Colin Firth

#73. Marketing is the act of inventing the product. The effort of designing it. The craft of producing it. The art of pricing it. The technique of selling it.

Seth Godin

#74. Friendship is a combination of art and craft. The craft part is in knowing how to give and how to take. The art part is in knowing when, and the whole process only works when no one is keeping track.

E.L. Konigsburg

#75. The kipper was in a race for it's life, and it knew it. It used all the skill its Maker had given it and drew the creature far away from the craft, to be sacrifice in the end. It was a fitting task for the kipper. But ... there is a thing about monsters. They remember.

Kathy Frias

#76. If they respect the craft and what we're doing and they bring something to the table and they work hard, I don't care what you do as your side job or as your day job.

Anthony Anderson

#77. Some films go so well, and some films are disappointing. It's the beauty of the craft. You get it right, and you get it wrong. You have tremendous highs, and you have tremendous lows. Hopefully, you learn from them and become better, as you go along.

Joseph McGinty Nichol

#78. It may take hundreds of pages before you begin to get a handle on the craft of writing, and your first scripts may not work. The next five to twenty may not either. However, the ones that do work owe everything to the ones that didn't.

Geoffrey S. Fletcher

#79. 'Hollyoaks' is where I learnt a lot of the craft, being in front of a camera six days a week. That's certainly an experience you don't get in drama school. It invites you to be comfortable in front of the camera.

Nico Mirallegro

#80. People look at technology as sometimes an end to things, and it isn't an end in certain cases. In the movie business, the act of creating in the art form of movies, the craft of movies is completely technical, and that's all it is.

George Lucas

#81. Even illegal weapons have lost their panache. Zip guns and shanks were at least homemade. Where is the craft in a grade-schooler firing a magnum? What is the world coming to? It's not even bad to be a communist anymore!

John Waters

#82. It's the in-between, the sustenance, not just the gears and bolts that make a human. When you forget to find out how the person was built - the oil, chemistry, and the craft - you miss all the beauty.

Piper Payne

#83. I try to stay away from the craft services table on set! That's probably why I am able to still get work in this business: I stay away from junk food.

Christian Slater

#84. Master the craft. Write lots, even if you never intend to do anything with it. Don't delete old, unpublished, or partial manuscripts. There are lots of occasions where you may be able to use some of that work. If the writing is strong, save it for later.

Eric Matheny

#85. I am interested in the idea of 'taste.' And by 'taste,' I mean opinion, inspiration and the craft of creating a personality through fabric and design.

Olivier Theyskens

#86. We of the craft are all crazy," Lord Byron, the high priest of crazies, wrote. "Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

#87. The profit motive is not only fundamental to our ability to reward shareholders and pay employees; it's fundamental to excellent journalism. Far from corrupting the craft, profits enhance it. Expansion drives diversity and diversity protects and strengthens our craft.

Lachlan Murdoch

#88. In the Craft the Goddess is not omnipotent. The cosmos is interesting rather than perfect, and everything is not part of some greater plan, nor is all necessarily under control.

Starhawk

#89. As much as I think John Coltrane belongs on the list, I think without Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, both of whom defined improvising on the tenor sax, there would not have been the evolution of the craft by John Coltrane.

Herbie Mann

#90. There's the craft of acting, and then there's a quality. There's a quality that someone has.

Noah Hawley

#91. The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

John Steinbeck

#92. I never even thought about being an actor. Somebody asked me if I'd like to learn the craft, and I said, 'Okay.' I was a gymnast in a show at that time, and somebody asked me afterwards one night. I performed as a gymnast for nine years, and then I did acting after that.

Mads Mikkelsen

#93. There is no better way to earn money than to do the things that you love to do. Money can flow into your experience through endless avenues. It is not the choice of the craft that limits the money that flows - but only your attitude toward money.

Esther Hicks

#94. Thus is the earth at once a desert and a paradise, rich in secret hidden gardens, gardens inaccessible, but to which the craft leads us ever back, one day or another.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#95. I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.

Michael Connelly

#96. I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that.

James Dickey

#97. Aye, it's the heart of the craft, the love and sweat that you put into it. If you think about the old tales, the magic comes from inside the person who creates it. - Conn

N.W. Moors

#98. At the end of the day, if I can say that I had a career where I was able to play all different kinds of characters and I'm known as someone who is well-respected for my approach to the craft, that would be a beautiful life.

Adepero Oduye

#99. Read. Read. Read. Read many genres. Read good writing. Read bad writing and figure out the difference. Learn the craft of writing.

Carol Berg

#100. Many times, what people call 'writer's block' is the confusion that happens when a writer has a great idea, but their writing skill is not up to the task of putting that idea down on paper. I think that learning the craft of writing is critical.

Pearl Cleage