Commitment to Craft Quotes

Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.

Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.

It's part of your job as an actor to put your personal problems behind you and work. Good actors can do that.

It's easy to be an actor at 8 or 9 in the morning, but it's really important to be focused and work hard at 6 and 7 at night, after you've been on the set for 10 or 12 hours. That time counts, too.

It was closer to manual labor than shooting a film. I always think of something Michael Caton-Jones told me: 'Pain is temporary. Film is forever.'

[When you are an actor] it's not a burden to go to work whether it's hard work, whether it's super early work, whatever. So, I go there because I want to be there. I want to do this. That helps a lot.

I never stopped grinding. I never stopped hustling. I never stopped working. I just kept moving. It has nothing to do with the money or anything like that. It's just that I love music.

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.

Just write. If you have to make a choice, if you say, 'Oh well, I'm going to put the writing away until my children are grown,' then you don't really want to be a writer. If you want to be a writer, you do your writing... If you don't do it, you probably don't want to be a writer, you just want to have written and be famous—which is very different.

When I started acting, I had a really strong discipline of knowing that you had to be on time, knowing that you had to work 12 to 16 hours a day, knowing you had to be prepared, knowing you had to be ready, and it's very interesting because if you're an artist and you're creating, you can work very, very long hours but as you're putting out that love of creation, it's almost like you're charged by it, you're charged by the process of it.

I think if you're half-hearted you shouldn't go into acting.

One mustn't allow acting to be like stoc kbroker - you must not take it just as a means of earning a living, to go down every day to do a job of work. The big thing is to combine punctuality, efficiency, good nature, obedience, intelligence, and concentration with an unawareness of what is going to happen next, thus keeping yourself available for excitement.

I love what I do... When I'm in there I don't want to be nowhere else in the world... I love this game more than anything.

Some of my affectionate envious friends say, "You write too much." Maybe, I answer. But as long as the best of your little is worse than the worst of my much, I will keep on doing so.

I won't miss having to stand for two hours at 4:30 a.m. and have freezing cold glue applied to my feet. I won't miss two-hour drives to work or long, long, long days sitting in my trailer waiting...waiting...waiting. I won't miss one day off a week. I won't miss glue in my ears. But I would do it all again tomorrow.

To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone - just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over...

In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well

At times, I think, 'What would I rather be doing than music?' That's what you have to ask yourself, if you feel like you need to be somewhere else... But there's nothing else I want to do more than music. That's why I stay in the booth.

I love creating music and television and film. I love the hustle, I love the grind, I love working sixteen- and eighteen-hour days and waking up at four the next morning and going to the gym. I love that.

Trust me, ... I know where my heart is and my heart's right here. I'm going to keep doing everything because I love to do it, but I will never sacrifice my time between the ropes. That's no shot to anybody. Everybody's got different career paths. This is mine.

Before I do a movie, I watch Meryl Streep movies over and over. It's not to mimic her. It's to remind myself to be more committed.

Film acting would be about 80 percent better than it has been lately if actors did their homework, if they didn't have egos that took the size of their talent for granted.

Once we start shooting, it's in there. You're trying to get into a place where you rise to the work, rather than make it manageable or make it work for you.

Acting is fun, and if you enjoy doing it, you should take it seriously and see what you can do. It's been a blast, and so you know it was kind of like a test for me to move to L.A. and start studying and see how much I was really into it. Cause I wasn't gonna do it if I wasn't 100% committed.