Quotes about Revision

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

If a writer rewrites an essay, people who read the new version are unlikely to complain that their thoughts have been broken by some newly introduced incompatibility.

The stuff that comes easy takes the most rewriting. And the stuff that comes hard reads the easiest (Writing for the Soul, p. 194).

There is no urge so great as for one man to edit another man's work.

The two most important tools an architect has are the eraser in the drawing room and the sledge hammer on the construction site.

It is a form of generational narcissism to change texts to suit one's own needs.

There was a spectator in me who, even while I squirmed and obeyed, remained observant, note taking for some future revision.

and he also told me that I should rethink submitting my thesis. He read your thesis. He read three different drafts of it, actually. Did he understand it? Pretty much. He understood what was wrong with it. And that was? That nobody could understand it.

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.

Don't get discouraged because there's a lot of mechanical work to writing. I rewrote the first part of Farewell to Arms at least fifty times.

No matter how great a writer, artist, or entrepreneur, he is a mortal, he is fallible. He is not proof against Resistance. He will drop the ball; he will crash. That's why they call it rewriting.

I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.