Quotes and Sayings About Rewriting
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Particularly in my early days, I did very little rewriting.
-- Jimmy Webb -
More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.
-- John Irving -
Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.
-- John Updike -
Rewriting to me means, if I work on it for three days, I've rewritten it.
-- Jules Shear -
Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.
-- Larry L. King -
There is no great writing, only great rewriting.
-- Louis D. Brandeis -
The past is a script we are constantly rewriting.
-- Michael Moorcock -
I didn't like people rewriting my dialogue. I didn't like the fact that we'd start a comic with the Joker, and by the time we inked it, he would have turned into the Scarecrow.
-- Neil Gaiman -
Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush.
-- Peter Murphy -
Too many are focused on rewriting the past, invent the future!
-- Philippe Kahn -
There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
-- Robert Graves -
[Rewriting is] a whole other art form; it's about craftsmanship.
-- Sam Shepard -
The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
-- Saul Bellow -
The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting. . . . Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur.
-- Sol Stein -
I never really like it when other writers talk about coming in behind people and rewriting.
-- Tony Gilroy -
I marveled a bit at the feat Lubianka re-education. I also began to understand more clearly what was meant by rewriting history for the proletariat and how it could be arranged that young people would hear nothing whatsoever of God.
-- Walter Ciszek -
If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once objectified I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
-- William James -
That rewriting of literary history is most obvious in the case of The Yage Letters, where I was able to show that the true history inverts the official one.
-- Oliver Harris