Gregory Bateson Quotes

The first thing you've got to do is know your craft, and then you can do something else with it.

You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice.

Data is what distinguishes the dilettante from the artist.

You just want to hone your craft, whatever it may be.

I think it's a shame when you come across young actors and musicians who haven't had the time to learn their craft. It doesn't matter if it's acting or music; you really have to learn how to do it from the bottom up because unless you have a great work ethic... fame is a terrible thing to have.

You have to continue to hone your craft.

You've got to perfect your craft.

I never had a problem with technique.

You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.

It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.

You have to know your craft. I find that most people who are very, very successful know their craft and have done the research.

The difference between the novice and the master is simply that the novice has not learnt, yet, how to do things in such a way that he can afford to make small mistakes. The master knows that the sequence of his actions will always allow him to cover his mistakes a little further down the line. It is this simple but essential knowledge which gives the work of a master carpenter its wonderful, smooth, relaxed, and almost unconcerned simplicity.

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.

No one has mastery, Before he is at the end, Of his art and his life.

Self-expression without craft is for toddlers.

I have put in more than 10,000 hours perfecting my craft. And I am good at it.

There is a fluency and an ease with which true mastery and expertise always expresses itself, whether it be in writing, whether it be in a mathematical proof, whether it be in a dance that you see on stage, really in every domain. But I think the question is, you know, where does that fluency and mastery come from?

If I had more skill in what I'm attempting, I wouldn't need so much courage

Creativity is not a substitute for competence.

Skill is how you close the gap between what you can see in your mind's eye and what you can produce; the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be. With absolute skill comes absolute confidence.

Play what you know and then play above that

It takes skill to bring something you've imagined into the world: to use words to create believable lives, to select the colors and textures of paint to represent a haystack at sunset, to combine ingredients to make a flavorful dish. No one is born with that skill. It is developed through exercise, through repitition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time. . . . If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

Don't only practise your art, but force your way into its secrets.

It's important to focus on what we do best and master one craft at a time.

In love as in art, good technique helps.