Quotes about Revision

Instead, it's a change in our response to the Question, and being true to the insight means being open to how it revises the whole.

I should mention something that nobody ever thinks about, but proofreading takes a lot of time. After you write something, there are these proofs that keep coming, and there's this panicky feeling that 'This is me and I must make it better.'

Poets are immersed in process, and I mean process not as an amorphous blur but as a discipline. The hard work of writing has taught me that in matters of the heart, such as writing, or faith, there is no right or wrong way to do it, but only the way of your life. Just paying attention will teach you what bears fruit and what doesn't. But it will be necessary to revise--to doodle, scratch out, erase, even make a mess of things--in order to make it come out right.

the imagination works not so much through inspiration as through perseverance. One must slog through the false starts, spot the wrong words and hold out for the right ones, and above all, be vigilant about staying on the path of revision, no matter how uncomfortable or even painful the journey might become.

You have to be somewhat ruthless with your work. You have to let things go. Even your favourite little part might not work in the end.

There's a line between revision and fretting, just working it to death." —Toni Morrison

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

What does it mean, anyway, to 'retract' what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid? In modern times a thought can be refuted , yes, but not retracted . (p. 179)

In everyday life, it is very rare that we are confronted with new facts about events of long ago. Our memories are almost never challenged. They can, instead, be frozen in place, no matter how flawed they are, or become a work in continual artistic revision.

An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board and a wrecking ball at the site.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short." [ Letter to Harrison Blake ; November 16, 1857]

We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.