#craftsman

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

He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants. ↗

— Friedrich August von Hayek

#appropriate #craftsman #cultivate #does #environment

Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet. ↗

— Hesiod

#craftsman #grudge #jealous #poet #poor

When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman. ↗

— Jean de la Bruyere

#bold #craftsman #good #inspires #judge

Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols. ↗

— John Calvin

#even #every #his #idols #master

But, when the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness. ↗

— Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

#craftsman #finished #great #kept #love