Masters and highly successful people are in a romantic relationships with their work

I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work. Which meant that life did not feel like work.

The Author To Her BookThou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,Who after birth did’st by my side remain,Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,Who thee abroad exposed to public view,Made thee in...

Be so good with your craft to the point that you would no longer have to beg for opportunities.

Remember if you write, write, write, you can never be wrong.”—Stephanie Skeem Author of Flotsam

When you’re socially awkward, you’re isolated more than usual, and when you’re isolated more than usual, your creativity is less compromised by what has already been said and done. All your hope in life starts...

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

The art and craft of early childhood teaching is in making decisions about fun, play and work. And it is this crafting that distinguishes the professional from the baby-sitter, parent or child minder.

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

Show me you care about our common tongue. Bring to your [writing] passion, deeply informed by knowledge of your subject. Stay me, not with apples and flagons, but with wit and grace, humor and intense...

Our exertions generally find no enduring physical correlatives. We are diluted in gigantic intangible collective projects, which leave us wondering what we did last year and, more profoundly, where we have gone and quite what...

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

The main question to a novel is — did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit...

Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can’t be done abruptly.”[Colm Tóibín, Novelist – Portrait of the Artist, The Guardian, 19 February 2013]

Restrictions and writing shouldn’t mix. Let your mind be open. Let it be a creative canvas.

Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.

The suicide committed by Sampson was partly determined by the craftiness of Delilah and partly decided by the disobedience of Sampson. Satan uses crafty means to set traps for us, but by our obedience of...

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...

The sane genius transforms everything that might disturb us, “the wildest dreams,” into something that is familiar and reassuring. It is his artfulness that makes us feel at home; it is the weak writer who...

The only thing you have then to believe in is your craft.

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is...

I prefer the pen. There is something elemental about the glide and flow of nib and ink on paper.

An author is similar to an actor. They play many characters in their lives—photographer, nurse, dancer, doctor, writer, etc. As an author, you have to learn your craft, know each and every element to become...

I write to find strength.I write to become the person that hides inside me.I write to light the way through the darkness for others.I write to be seen and heard.I write to be near those...

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

…the making of stories is only one part of my craft -mainly, I’m a heart whisperer…

However, James and Aamir did not discuss their astounding box office grosses or formulas for success.Instead, they exchanged notes on the process of film-making; how ideas, even seemingly crazy ones that require developing a unique...

When you make music or write or create, it’s really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you’re writing about at the time.

The classic, quote/unquote, craft of songwriting still works; it still is relevant.

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.

Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.

Some stories have to be written because no one would believe the absurdity of it all.

I don’t get it. It’s a bunch of trees with leaves.

It is impossible for any Sherlock Holmes story not to have at least one marvelous scene.[An Invitation to Learning, January 1942]

Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent...

If you’re any good at all, you know you can be better.

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

When you are posessed by evil spirits, it is crafty manipulations that you follow; but when you are posessed by the Holy Spirit of God, it is wise discretions you pursue!

Some people tend to throw your love to the dogs when you become totally submissive to them, but when you want to get out of the heat, they pull you back into the kitchen.

The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen … Perhaps it can’t be done without the poet, but it certainly can’t be...

Writing is a craft, being an author is work, and having readers and a following is a gift.

When I’m writing, I’m waiting to see somebody, and I’m waiting to hear them. It’s almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.”(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988)

Your craft is comprehensive if it represents you.

The world is a busy place filled with many busy businesses, both the Godly and the ungodly. It means before you go on to accept any activity or event that comes into the world, you...

A wise man can say a foolish thing at any time, anywhere, and to anybody.

This is the same establishment that all those who want, or rather aspire to, to be literary figures of the century, artists, painters and sculptors want acceptance from and approval. They want to be looked...

It’s as hard to get from almost finished to finished as to get from beginning to almost done.

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.

In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said “It is the trade entering his body.