“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Every artist was first an amateur.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It seems better to me for a child to have these skills and never use them, than not have them and one day need them," she said.”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

“The most complicated skill is to be simple.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do).”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

“If you're waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you'll never make it.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Bangs and smoke were more often the marks of ineptitude than expertise.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Any weapon is a good weapon as long as ye can use it with honor and skill.”
― Brian Jacques, High Rhulain

“Any fool can do something cool and look cool, but it takes skill to make something uncool cool again.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Whatever your passion is, keep doing it. Don't waste time chasing after success or comparing yourself to others. Every flower blooms at a different pace. Excel at doing what your passion is and only focus on perfecting it. Eventually people will see what you are great at doing, and if you are truly great, success will come chasing after you.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.”
― Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending a Staircase

“Think of yourself as a brand. You need to be remembered. What will they remember you for? What defines you? If you have it in you, do something that defines you. Invent something, develop a unique skill, get noticed for something — it creates a talking point.”
― Chris Arnold

“Emotion is always multiplied in the art of a person who doesn't really show much emotion. It once expanded deep within his hidden soul, and following the downplay his audience is blown away.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.”
― Edward Hopper

“When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution

“We don't value craftsmanship anymore! All we value is ruthless efficiency, and I say we deny our own humanity that way! Without appreciation for grace and beauty, there's no pleasure in creating things and no pleasure in having them! Our lives are made drearier, rather than richer! How can a person take pride in his work when skill and care are considered luxuries! We're not machines! We have a human need for craftsmanship!”
― Bill Watterson, There's Treasure Everywhere

“loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shape
of a helicopter the same size as the helicopter
and that's it's only skill
and it isn't good enough
but it's still amazing.”
― Tao Lin, this emotion was a little e-book

“Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Be a worthy worker and work will come.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood;
But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case
Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
To tell a voice that's genuinely good
From one that's base but merely has succeeded.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Few of us would regret the years it takes to complete an education or master a crucial skill. So why complain about the perseverance needed to become a well-balanaced and truly compassionate human being?”
― Matthieu Ricard

“You can perhaps, in a number of circumstances, tell yourself that you can't have more than you have until you do better than you're doing, but by all means steer clear of its reverse, the creed of defeat, in saying that you can't do better than you're doing until you can have more than you have.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“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.”
― Twyla Tharp

“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 him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis’s comments on them, and burned them.”
― A.S. Byatt , Possession

“I'd rather strive for the kind of interview where instead of me asking to introduce myself to society, society asks me to introduce myself to society.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“People skills are useless with cats, because cats are immune to training, and do whatever they decide in any situation... And most importantly they aren’t human.”
― Will Advise, Nothing is here...

“Some were made with skill and intelligence
Some with passion and charm
But they, they were raw, and strived to remain so…”
― Pearl Pandya

“Speed will follow when the mechanism of the movements is more assured.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche