#craftsman

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#baskets #craftsmanship #gives #imagination #many

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist. ↗

— Louis Nizer

#brain #craftsman #hands #heart #his

God has allowed some magical reversal to occur, so that you see the scorpion pit as an object of desire, and all the beautiful expanse around it as dangerous and swarming with snakes. ↗

— Rumi

#beauty

There are several ways to perform almost any act - an efficient, workable, artistic way and a careless, indifferent, sloppy way. Care and artistry are worth the trouble. They can be a satisfaction to the practitioner and a joy to all beholders. ↗

— Helen Nearing

#craftsmanship #life

Subtle and coy, the cemento at Maalouf's did not speak of war, or frontiers, and the spaces they narrowed, but, rather, grandeur. The tiles returned one to a realm where imagination, artistry, and craftsmanship were not only appreciated but given free reign, where what was unique and striking, or small and perfect, or wrought with care was desired, where gazed-upon objects were the products of peaceful hearts, hands long practiced and trained. War ends the values and traditions that produce such treasures. Nothing is maintained. Cultures that may seem as durable as stone can break like glass, leaving all the things that held them together unattended. I believe that the craftsman, the artist, the cook, and the silversmith are peacemakers. They instill grace; they lull the world to calm. ↗

— Anthony Shadid

#family

The instruction here is not for every kind of writer - not for the writer of nurse books or thrillers or porno or the cheaper sort of sci-fi - though it is true that what holds for the most serious kind of fiction will generally hold for junk fiction as well. (Not everyone is capable of writing junk fiction: It requires an authentic junk mind. Most creative-writing teachers have had the experience of occasionally helping to produce, by accident, a pornographer. The most elegant techniques in the world, filtered through a junk mind, become elegant junk techniques.) ↗

— John Gardner

#books #craft #craftsmanship #fiction #genre-fiction

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#craft #craftsmanship #creative-process #crudeness #culture

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman. ↗

— Emile Zola

#becomes #born #craftsman #inside #men

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say. ↗

— Jeffery Deaver

#basic #command #craftsman #know #language

First of all, I'd like to say here the fact that I'm not naturally a craftsman has made me work very hard. ↗

— Beatrice Wood

#fact #first #first of all #hard #here