Craft Quotes

Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abru

To make the world. To make it again and again. To make it in the very maelstrom of its undoing.

Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft.

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I ...

Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant/Success in Circuit lies...

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or mere...

[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often gi...

He who works with his hands is a laborer.He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.He ...

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everyt...

[I]f a book is well written, I always find it too short.

The instruction here is not for every kind of writer - not for the writer of nurse books or thriller...

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The sto...

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The sto...

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last para...

One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is ...

One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is ...

When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, co...

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.

Jeffrey Zeldman had an astonishing ability to craft a seductive coolness using educated references, ...

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work. Wh...

If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosop...

What about his style?" asked Dalgliesh who was beginning to think that his reading had been unnecess...

There is something deeply satisfying in shaping something with your hands. Proper artificing is like...

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows ...

It is impossible for any Sherlock Holmes story not to have at least one marvelous

If it's flipping hamburgers at McDonald's, be the best hamburger flipper in the world. Whatever it i...

Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.

The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did yo...

The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did yo...

T.S. Eliot said to me 'There’s only one way a poet can develop his actual writing – apart from self-...

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the y...

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the y...

Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of S...

Our exertions generally find no enduring physical correlatives. We are diluted in gigantic intangibl...

The Author To Her BookThou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,Who after birth did'st by my side...

In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers ...