201 Quotes About Craft

Rich will be my life if I can keep my memories full and brimming, and record them on clear-eyed mornings while I set joyously to work setting pen to holy craft.

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 up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.

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)

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.

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 must weigh its Values, examine the Virtues, listen to Views and then you give your Verdict. Satan is not wise; he is just crafty!

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

Writing to corroborate what you already think is the essence of bad writing.

But what I care most about is when the reader is finished with my work they can say, I don't know the particulars, but I know that emotion.

Life is a craft no one masters. But we will see an abundance of amazing colors, beautiful views and stunning insights along the way.