Rewriting Quotes - Page 4

• What is easy to read has been difficult to write. The labour of writing and rewriting, correcting and recorrecting, is the due exacted by every good book from its author, even if he knows from the beginning exactly what he wants to say. A limpid style is invariably the result of hard labour, and the easily flowing connection of sentence with sentence and paragraph with paragraph has always been won by the sweat of the brow.

  G. M. Trevelyan

  Book, Writing, Sweat

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• History is the torch that is meant to illuminate the past, to guard us against the repetition of our mistakes of other days. We cannot join in the rewriting of history to make it conform to our comfort and convenience.

  Claude Bowers

  Mistake, Writing, Past

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• I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You’re the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You’re my letter to desire: And you’ll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You’re my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends.

  Neil Gaiman

  Dream, Drama, Book

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• We’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it.

  S.J. Watson

  Memories, Believe, Thinking

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• So much of the effort that goes into writing prose for me is about making sentences that capture the music that I'm hearing in my head. It takes a lot of work, writing, writing, and rewriting to get the music exactly the way you want it to be.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Effort, Want

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• During improvisations, I'll hear people bringing back up details from something I heard about at breakfast or something somebody was saying that they were thinking about, and it informs a rewriting of a scene.

  Joe Swanberg

  Thinking, People, Details

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• That is as true for fiction or non-fiction. The writer has to really know their subject. It is really important to remember that the readers are a lot smarter than the writer. Also, good writing has to do with rewriting. You will never get it right the first time. So you rewrite and rewrite again until you get it right. Until you, and the reader, will be able to visualize what you're writing about.

  Michael Scott

  Writing, Important, Fiction

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• I think most presidents are amazed at the overwhelming responsibility they have when they enter office and the tremendous amount of work there is. See, a modern president has far more responsibility than a president years ago. And if I were rewriting the Constitution, I would suggest a president be more like a monarch and then have a prime minister under him.

  Billy Graham

  Responsibility, Thinking, Years

  "Tony Snow Interviews Billy Graham". "Fox News Sunday" with Tony Snow, www.deceptioninthechurch.com. January 2, 2000.

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• Hillary has already gotten a record $8 million advance from Simon & Schuster for the book -- reportedly the most anyone has ever received for rewriting history.

  Ann Coulter

  Book, Records, Millions

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• I try not to worry about rewriting books that worked well the first time. I'm too busy writing new books to worry about things that are already in print

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Book, Writing, Worry

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• Artistry is important. Skill, hard work, rewriting, editing, and careful, careful craft: All of these are necessary. These are what separate the beginners from experienced artists.

  Sarah Kay

  Hard Work, Artist, Editing

  "How I got the courage to tell my story" by Sarah Kay, www.cnn.com. May 1, 2011.

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• I know when a story is finished when there is not a single thing more I can think to do to it. And since I know at the start what the last line will be, I know when I've reached that point as logically as I can that it's finished. As for the rewriting-it's not foolproof, of course, but if you're honest about having thought of every possibility and you still come back to what you have, what more can you do?

  Amy Hempel

  Writing, Thinking, Lines

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• When you perform in front of an audience after only two days of rehearsal, you're flying by the seat of your pants - particularly when they're rewriting the show right up to the moment the camera goes on.

  Michael Richards

  Two, Flying, Cameras

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• The biggest challenge for me has been in coping with my perfectionism. I have a stiflingly hard time moving forward in a project if it's not 'just right' all along the way. The trap I so easily fall into is rewriting and rewriting the same scenes over and over to make them perfect, instead of continuing on into the wild unknown of the story.

  Laini Taylor

  Moving, Fall, Hard Times

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• Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft; we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't.

  William Zinsser

  Believe, Writing, Emotional

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• Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting.

  Joan Didion

  Twenties, Needs, Fifty

  "Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1". Interview with Hilton Als, www.theparisreview.org. 2006.

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• I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.

  Ted Dekker

  Religious, Philosophy, Writing

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• Rewriting is a large part of the whole job. And get rid of stuff that's not working. Just pare it down until it's a beautiful thing you can hand in.

  Kurt Loder

  Beautiful, Jobs, Hands

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• The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it's a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together.

  Rebecca Stead

  Writing, Together, Stories

  National Book Foundation's BookUpNYC Interview, www.nationalbook.org.

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• Learn a lot about the world and finish things, even if it is just a short story. Finish it before you start something else. Finish it before you start rewriting it. That's really important.
  It's to find out if you're going to be a writer or not, because that's one of the most important lessons.
  Most, maybe 90% of people, will start writing and never finish what they started. If you want to be a writer that's the hardest and most important lesson: Finish it. Then go back to fix it.

  Tad Williams

  Writing, People, Important

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• We are redefining terms and rewriting laws and removing fences everywhere you turn, and we seem to think we can do that with impunity.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Thinking, Law, Fence

  Twitter post from Apr 25, 2015

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• Once you start rewriting, you're not able to stop. With each draft the fundamental banality and worthlessness of the material becomes more evident even as its vitality and spontaneity are drained from it.

  Barry N. Malzberg

  Able, Vitality, Fundamentals

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• I feel the most natural thing is for music to come that way because it's sort of like poetry. Though I do think with poets that I like, like Charles Olson or Ezra Pound, they were rewriting constantly, until the poem becomes a diamond.But with music I don't really feel that way.

  Stephen Malkmus

  Thinking, Way, Pounds

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Another trick in software is to avoid rewriting the software by using a piece that's already been written, so called component approach which the latest term for this in the most advanced form is what's called Object Oriented Programming.

  Bill Gates

  Pieces, Form, Programming

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• Writing and rewriting are the same thing to me. I don't believe what Allen Ginsberg said that "first thought, then - " I just don't believe that.

  Lynne Tillman

  Believe, Writing, Firsts

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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