Quotes About Rewrites

#1. Through ignorance, through faith, through intelligence, through trickery and cunning, through illumination, the reader rewrites the text with the same words of the original but under another heading, re-creating it, as it were, in the very act of bringing it into being.

Alberto Manguel

#2. My journey, however, has followed a far less predictable story: stalled chapters, unexpected plot twists, and dozens of rewrites that have left the ending more than a little uncertain.

Mandy Hale

#3. Tom [Collins] was a great influence on me. He really pushed me ... constantly demanded rewrites. And, as much as I despised them, it was the best thing that could have happened because he just wouldn't settle for less. It had to be right, and it had to be good.

Dean Dillon

#4. 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.

Paul Graham

#5. When I started 'Still Missing,' I had a few key plot points in mind, which I played around with mentally for a couple of months, then one day I just started writing. Not having an outline led to some cool plot twists, but also many rewrites! A lot of the plotting happened on subsequent drafts.

Chevy Stevens

#6. I don't do rewrites. I put all the pages in a pile next to the typewriter.

Francine Pascal

#7. The history of psychiatry rewrites itself so often that it almost resembles the self-serving chronicles of a totalitarian and slightly paranoid regime.

J.G. Ballard

#8. Good novels are not written, they are rewritten. Great novels are diamonds mined from layered rewrites.

Piers Paul Read

#9. Anyway, several rewrites later, Del Rey Books did publish my first novel, and it did become the first work of fiction on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list.

Terry Brooks

#10. I do first draft in longhand, which saves a lot of rewriting. I try to get a certain amount done each day. Don't always, but I try. Then I clean up in the rewrites.

Harry Turtledove

#11. It rewrites the contract, I'd read somewhere. Your self's no longer central. This thing comes out of you and drags half your soul along after it like a blanket.

Glen Duncan

#12. But even if the captain rewrites his own history, how could it affect your reality? I'm from a place you call a fairy tale, and I'm still here."
"But . . . the Vaadi Al-Maas was real once. People believed in it."
"I believe in you. Simple enough, right?" His smile was heartbreaking.

Heidi Heilig

#13. I have to re-write a lot. I couldn't tell you how many drafts I write, but I know I've done at least twenty rewrites on each book.

Kimberly Willis Holt

#14. 'Doctor Who' rewrites your brain because at first when you watch it, you think, 'That doesn't make sense.'

Holly Black

#15. Every April God rewrites the book of Genesis.

Austin O'Malley

#16. I'm tired of doing rewrites for executives.

Richard LaGravenese

#17. Yes, I did some rewrites of the show as some of the stuff was not very good and I worked my butt off to make it something that the audience liked and that I could be proud of.

Gil Gerard

#18. Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.

John Podhoretz

#19. I'm a well-intentioned plotter who ends up with wondrous pantsing revelations and (at times) ginormous rewrites that look almost nothing like my carefully plotted plans.

Violet Duke

#20. There's this notion that allows people to create their own collection of songs, so it rewrites what a song is. They may only want 10 seconds of something, or they may only want this particular song, or they want this group of songs. It becomes much more user-controlled.

Michael Nesmith

#21. As a very experienced writer once told me, 'It's in the rewrites'.

Tom Skerritt

#22. The best writing advice I ever got was "Keep moving forward, don't retreat into rewrites." The worst came from a book that said "Writing fiction is like telling lies," which just seems stupid to me.

David B. Coe

#23. And so we beat on, books against the critics, borne back ceaslessly into rewrites.

F Scott Fitzgerald

#24. Time is a strange storyteller. It writes, erases and rewrites endlessly. Things change, places and people become unrecognizable, but stories are repeated endlessly

Vandana Shanker

#25. An author who rewrites his own work must essentially be two people. One is the free flowing uncritical writer who creates the bulk of the material - the other is the extremely critical editor whose aim it is to make the book as good as it can become.

Gudjon Bergmann

#26. When I first started writing 'Still Missing,' I didn't actually realize I was writing a thriller. I thought it was more women's fiction, but during the many years of rewrites, I kept taking out the boring parts, and then my agent informed me that I had written a thriller.

Chevy Stevens

#27. The ego is a self-justifying historian which seeks only that information that agrees with it, rewrites history when it needs to, and does not even see the evidence that threatens it.

Anthony Greenwald

#28. Adventrue rewrites the routine of our lives and wakes us sharply from the comforts of the familiar. It allows us to see how vast the expanse of our experience. Our ability to grow is no longer linear but becomes unrestricted to any direction we wish to run.

Josh Gates

#29. Strong motivation is the most important factor in getting you to the top

Edmund Hillary

#30. My eyes traced the lines of my hips, my convex stomach, the legs beneath my jeans.
What did the world see in me?

Jenny B. Jones

#31. I knew when I left to go to start my career, you don't want to get in front of a band and say, uh, give me "Stardust" without saying D-flat.

Carl Gardner

#32. I grew up in a country where I remember my parents not being able to have a conversation on the phone. The walls had ears, and you couldn't speak freely.

Jan Koum

#33. Heaven is a place you create inside your mind.
By becoming loving, peaceful, caring, and kind.

Debasish Mridha

#34. There's no such thing as a typical person or a typical day.

Marty Rubin

#35. There are people who treat you right and there are people who do not treat you right. Don't get affected by the latter! Hold on to the former - the chosen ones in your life and move on.

Avijeet Das

#36. Criticism is the fountainhead of control.

Susan Forward

#37. Peace is joy at rest. Joy is peace on its feet.

Anne Lamott