We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability.

Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.

Our modern economy privileges pure profit, momentary transactions and rapid fluidity. Part of craft’s anchoring role is that it helps to objectify experience and also to slow down labor. It is not about quick transactions or easy victories. That slow tempo of craftwork, of taking the time you need to do something well, is profoundly stabilizing to individuals.

We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability.

Authority is itself inherently an act of imagination.

The pleasures of relaxed chat, of casual conversation, encourage the ethnographer in everyone

Issac Stern rule: the better your technique, the more impossible your standards.