Quotes About Revision

I love stage work. The thing about plays is that they're perfectible. With film, you shoot that take and maybe another. During 'Spamalot,' I rewrote Act II three times.

A lot of what we think of as history is actually just a version of events which may or may not be true.

I have, for instance, silently corrected Jefferson's frequent use of "it's" for "its" and "recieve" for "receive

With writing, we have second chances.

Writing is like painting; editing is like sculpture.  Same sensibilities, different skill set.

Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.

In the critic's vocabulary, the word precursor is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. -- Essay: Kafka and his Precursors

In the critic's vocabulary, the word precursor is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

En una ocasión le pregunté a Alfonso Reyes por qué publicamos, y Reyes me contestó: «Publicamos para no tener que pasarnos la vida corrigiendo borradores».

It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours." —

Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.

Nothing is wasted when you are a writer. The stuff that doesn't work has to be written to make way for the stuff that might;

Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.

Writing is like shadow boxing. Editing is when the shadows fight back.

Creating different versions of a drawing of story can encourage kids the value of revising their ideas. Getting input from others can also help them to continue evolving their standards. They might learn to embrace confusion and stop expecting perfection on the first try.

I am of the opinion that there is nothing which has been produced by the will of man which cannot in its turn be altered by another human will.

I turned to memory, knowing full well that it is revisionist and that each time we remember something, we alter it slightly, massaging our perspective and layering it with new understanding in order to make meaning in the present.

I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat and flatter it.

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.

I'm glad I wrote them when I did because I think if I were to write my first novel now, it would be a different book, and it may not be the book that everybody wants to read. But if I were given a red pen now, and I went back... I'd take that thing apart.

A pencil has eraser because it make mistake.

I'm the sort of person who doesn't write in ink. I only write in pencil, so it can be rubbed out.

With pencil, you can always erase.

Probably 95 percent of the things that are written never get on the screen.