Revision Quotes

• Half my life is an act of revision.

  John Irving

  Life, Writing, Half

  John Irving (2016). “Trying to Save Piggy Sneed: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.14, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn't realize the teacher was saying, 'Make it shine. It's worth it.' Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Beautiful, Teacher, Writing

  43 Copy quote

• Revision is not going back and fussing around, but going forward into the process of creation

  May Sarton

  Creation, Process, Fussing

  10 Copy quote

• Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change.

  Richard Branson

  Change, Stories, Tales

  FaceBook post by Richard Branson from Jul 22, 2015

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• Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

  Bernard Malamud

  Writing, Pleasure, Exquisite

  "Reflections of a Writer: Long Work, Short Life". The New York Times, March 20, 1988.

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• Students need to be reminded that revision isn't merely making a few cosmetic changes. Revision is seeing and then reseeing our words and practicing strategies that make a difference in our writing.

  Georgia Heard

  Writing, Differences, Making A Difference

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• Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It's a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose.

  John Dufresne

  New Beginnings, Creative, Energy

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Motivational, Leadership

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.19, St. Martin's Press

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• I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest.

  Katherine Paterson

  Writing, Our Lives, Closest

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• I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Pencils, Erasers

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• The best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before. If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision.

  Neil Gaiman

  Writing, Eye, Giving

  8 Copy quote

• You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.

  Margaret Atwood

  Attitude, Reality, Trying

  "Attitude". Margaret Atwood's commencement address at the University of Toronto, Canada, www.humanity.org. June 14, 1983.

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• Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

  Bernard Malamud

  Writing, Ideas, Reform

  "Reflections of a Writer: Long Work, Short Life". The New York Times, March 20, 1988.

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• Through revision, I enter the realm of the unspeakable and find the words that have eluded me.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Realms, Unspeakable

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The writer’s life is a life of revisions.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Life Is

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• In revision, your imagination becomes deeply engaged with your material. It's when you come to know your characters and begin to perceive their motivations and values.

  John Dufresne

  Motivation, Character, Imagination

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Revision is its own reward.

  Marianne Moore

  Rewards

  Jean de La Fontaine, Marianne Moore (1954). “The fables of La Fontaine”

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• In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

  Rita Dove

  Poet, Process, Enjoy

  Rita Dove, Earl G. Ingersoll (2003). “Conversations with Rita Dove”, p.136, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I think there simply comes a point at which you're beating your head against the wall with revision, when you're making something different but not better. For me, revision usually has more to do with making the language prettier, finding clearer images, using more active verbs.

  Mary J. Miller

  Wall, Thinking, Different

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Farewell, Writing, Arms

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• But revision is a creative act, not merely an analytical imposition of rules of style on a more creative first draft. That's a myth - that the first draft is more creative and everything after that is ruining creativity.

  K. M. Soehnlein

  Creativity, Creative, Style

  Source: therumpus.net

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• All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!

  T. E. Lawrence

  Details, Ornaments, World

  Letter to Bruce Rogers, August 20, 1931.

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• I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

  Dorothy Parker

  Writing, Seven, Great Author

  Dorothy Parker, Stuart Y. Silverstein (2009). “Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

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• It was my dream, and probably the dream of every one of us, to bring about a revision of the Versailles Treaty by peaceful means, which was provided for in that very treaty.

  Hans Frank

  Dream, Peace, Mean

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• If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Writing, Tasks, Ends

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