Craftsmanship Quotes

We at BMW do not build cars as consumer objects, just to drive from A to B. We build mobile works of art.

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

Everyone should learn a manual trade: It's never too late to become an honest person.

When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back.

While we have land to labor, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a workbench or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry; but for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe.

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

When I work on a movie, I never aim for records, collections or the number one position. I always concentrate on my work and look for ways to improve my acting abilities. I also advise my co-stars not to concentrate on these pretty issues and just focus on acting.

God is in the details.

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.

Because I write very simply, but inside the simplicity, there's a lot of subtlety. That's what I'm proud of.

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

I have a big brother who would make dolls' houses and playhouses and furniture out of wood. He was the one who taught me from such a young age that you could just make something. The physical act of gluing something together was really formative for me.

The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail.

In football as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigour and precision.

I don't know when acting came to be more about awards than about the work. Judging who's better than the other person shouldn't be part of why we're doing this job. It should be about entertaining people.

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

We want to be good at our craft, whether it's writing music or playing it live.

I had the great good fortune of working with Christopher Plummer, Frances Sternhagen, and Arthur Hill early in my career, and it set a standard for the kind of work I want to do.

I don't really feel like you're making a record unless you pay attention to it.

What is good work? You just know it when you see it. You just can't explain it.

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.

I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft.

Quality. That's the first word, the one word that comes to mind when I think of the books published by Abrams. In a world where so many companies are willing to cut corners, to do things the easy way in order to enhance the bottom line, it's gratifying to know that there's one company that obviously takes such pride in its finished product, one company that can always be counted on to design and produce a book that is, itself, as much a work of art as the illustrations on its pages.

Everything we do on 'Luck' is absolutely no different than if we'd had been doing it in a feature film. There's no short cuts. The specificity of what every single line might mean. Everything Dustin Hoffman does. Kevin Dunn is as authentic in the last scene of the last episode as he is in the first scene of the first episode.

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.