Arundhati Roy Quotes

I like my hands. They're certainly scarred up, but they're wormy. They're knuckly. They're hands that have done stuff, and they're not going anywhere.

A carpenter is known by his chips.

The strongest of metals is forged under the most violent of conditions, my lord. It is buried deep in the hottest coals and then beat and pounded until it is bent into shaped. Then it becomes the strongest, most lethal of weapons. A thing of absolute beauty and force

Make the workmanship surpass the materials.

The beauty of a finely worked object points to the beauty of the craftsmanship. The beauty of the craftsmanship points to the beauty of the name which was the source of the craftsmanship. The beauty of the name of the craftsman's art points to the beauty of the craftsman's attributes manifested in that art.

Quality is pride of workmanship.

When something is well-crafted, you know it, and the enjoyment comes from experiencing it.

The nut of the thing is that if what you make is hard like a diamond, you can put it anywhere. You can put it up your and it will still be beautiful.

The house praises the carpenter.

Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.

If a person sweeps streets for a living, he should sweep them as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed, as Shakespear wrote.

The workmanship was better than the subject matter.

In short, Beauty is everywhere. It is not that she is lacking to our eye, but our eyes which fail to perceive her. Beauty is character and expression. Well, there is nothing in nature which has more character than the human body. In its strength and its grace it evokes the most varied images. One moment it resembles a flower: the bending torso is the stalk; the breasts, the head, and the splendor of the hair answer to the blossoming of the corolla. The next moment it recalls the pliant creeper, or the proud and upright sapling.

I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot.

The carpenter is not the best who makes more chips than all the rest.

Consider how wool is turned into an elegantly designed carpet by coming into contact with an intelligent person.

As the excellence of steel is strength, and the excellence of art is beauty, so the excellence of mankind is moral character.

Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.

The wrinkled man in the wheelchair with the legs wrapped, the girl with her face punctured deep with the teeth marks of a dog, the mess of the world, and I see - this, all this, is what the French call d'un beau affreux, what the Germans call hubsch-hasslich - the ugly-beautiful. That which is perceived as ugly transfigures into beautiful. What the postimpressionist painter Paul Gauguin expressed as 'Le laid peut etre beau' - The ugly can be beautiful. The dark can give birth to life; suffering can deliver grace.

Before the age of adulteration it was held that behind each work there stood some conception of its perfect execution. It was this that gave zest to labor and served to measure the degree of success.

Everything is sold to skill and labor; and where nature furnishes the materials, they are still rude and unfinished, till industry, ever active and intelligent, refines them from their brute state, and fits them for human use and convenience.

In times of adversity and change, we really discover who we are and what we're made of.

I have always regarded manual labour as creative and looked with respect-and, yes, wonder-at people who work with their hands. It seems to me that their creativity is no less than that of a violinist or painter.

Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with quality.

The only difference between black coal and a precious diamond is the amount of pressure it endured.