Quotes About Refinement

You'll learn that the key to a great book is editing—grinding, buffing, and polishing—not writing.

an editor who is a mentor, advisor, and psychiatrist. Don't kid yourself—a good editor will make your book better.

Steve Jobs taught me that little details separate the mediocre from the excellent.

I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem.

The one place I've seen something really come together is in editing. Sometimes you can save pieces in a way that you're really shocked.

One must learn, if one is to see the beauty in Japan, to like an extraordinarily restrained and delicate loveliness

A pilgrimage is an admirable remedy for over-fastidiousness and sickly refinement.

In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject. Actually, he keeps chiseling away at the nonessentials until the truth of his creation is revealed without obstruction.

Just because it was done well, doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better.

I read what I write over and over and make corrections and improvements, until I reach the conclusion that the material deserves to stand on its own

This was not some regular dame. No, this was a doll with high tastes, with ideas dancing in her head like fireflies.

I represent luxury, and that's what I love.

A good edit process turns rocks into diamonds, and every author should love that part as much as the creative phase. I do love it. It's a different side to writing. It's like the fine-tuning.

She was hardly more affable than a cameo.

The epitome of sophistication is utter simplicity.

She had expressed herself, as women will, in a smug broadside of pastel shades. Nothing clashed because nothing had the strength to clash; everything murmured of safety among the hues; all was refinement.

He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will emerge as pure gold. Job 23:10

I think the time is ripe for a return to the refinement of lifestyle that the pocket watch embodies. A personal pleasure that you know you have in your pocket, which requires an elegant gesture to use and show to others.

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

Simple things don't interest me.

As you get older, you develop your style. For me, the simpler, the better.

My palate is simpler than it used to be. A young chef adds and adds and adds to the plate. As you get older, you start to take away.

Simplicity should not be identified with bareness.

I continue to be drawn to clarity and simplicity. 'Less is more' remains my mantra.