Top 100 Revise Quotes
#1. Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation - the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.
Peter De Vries
#2. I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied.
M.J. Rose
#3. Write. Write. Write. Learn how to revise. No story is perfect straight from the keyboard.
Carol Berg
#4. I don't spend the day writing. I'll maybe write fresh copy for two hours, and then I'll go back and revise some of it and print what I like and then turn it off.
Stephen King
#5. My sense of a poem - my notion of how you revise - is: you get yourself into a state where what you are intensely conscious of is not why you wrote it or how you wrote it, but what you wrote.
Philip Levine
#6. I always entertain the notion that I'm wrong, or that I'll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.
Anthony Bourdain
#7. The original games were gladiatorial fights to the death. We had to revise that after a few years because, well, people stopped signing up.
Craig Schaefer
#8. We'll need to revise the tired assumption that people automatically become more conservative as they grow older.
Charles Kennedy
#9. of a total of 268) affixed their signatures to the Nineteen Articles.
It was indicated that the Draft Committee would meet within the year to review and, if necessary, revise the statement.
R.C. Sproul
#10. Don't live in regret! It is such a useless idea.
Use the memory to prevent us do bad things!
Regret is a childish wish, or an empty hope,
trying to revise the bitter memory of the past.
Toba Beta
#11. Every time I revise, life just gets a little worse for my protagonist.
B.K. Raine
#12. I don't want to help a politician revise the truth.
Terry Gross
#13. When you put your characters in a dire situation, they often do things that surprise even you, so you have to go back and revise your original conception of who they are.
Hallie Ephron
#14. It's easier to revise lousy writing than to revise a blank sheet of paper.
S.A. Bodeen
#15. Unless you experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeatedly fail. There are no shortcuts for this painstaking process.
Jonah Lehrer
#16. When you write, you are telling a story ... to yourself. When you revise, you are telling a story to yourself ... over and over again.
Kai Strand
#17. Only in your imagination can you revise.
Fay Wray
#18. I think kids abandon stories all the time. They start stories and get frustrated or get a different, better idea. I think that it is more worthwhile to stick with a story and revise it and try to finish it than abandon ship. Revisions, for any writer, are the name of the game.
Gail Carson Levine
#19. Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.
Henry Ford
#20. If you try to write 1,000 words a day, as I do, after 100 days you'll look up and have a book. It may be a mess, and you may have to revise it 50 times, but you can't revise it if you haven't written it.
Justin Cronin
#21. If you say bullshit on things come in handy,
better revise it before others say otherwise.
Toba Beta
#22. I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.
John Dufresne
#23. That is what we have in revisionist historians. It starts with their own atheism, their own unbelief, and then they go back and attempt to revise and rewrite history in their own image.
D. James Kennedy
#24. Honor doesn't revise according to company just as integrity doesn't diminish due to circumstance.
Donna Lynn Hope
#25. Students often have such a lofty idea of what a poem is, and I want them to realize that their own lives are where the poetry comes from. The most important things are to respect the language; to know the classical rules, even if only to break them; and to be prepared to edit, to revise, to shape.
Yusef Komunyakaa
#26. So, the process of revision, it's not systematic. But for me, I mean, I know a lot of poets who write out a draft and then revise it and I think they're happier people. But, I'm just not able to do it that way. I need to just continually examine it as I do it.
Edward Hirsch
#27. If you don't listen to the question entirely, then
you are going to revise your answers frequently.
Toba Beta
#28. One good thing the teaching has given me is the ability to read and revise my own work.
Tom Barbash
#29. We live and die by our stories if we don't rewrite our own history. The past is merely what we make of it, the future ours to create. Rewrite revise, erase.
Sheryl Mallory-Johnson
#30. If an organization is not able to change its model of itself unless and until completely clear-cut evidence accumulates, that organization will tend to learn late, that is, it will revise its model of vulnerabilities only after serious events occur.
David D. Woods
#31. Grab a pen and put down some words - your name even - and a title: something to see, to revise, to carve, to do over in the opposite way
Jacques Barzun
#33. I'd drown in a sea of tears if I lived my life ruminating on the past. I would undoubtedly revise memories to be more joyful that they were, or ever have been.
Maximillian Degenerez
#34. I had been dreaming a complicated dream about helping poets revise their poems, so that each ending would open like a flower. I was not arguing, but engaged in a rousing discussion.
Diane Wakoski
#35. I wish I wrote drafts and then revised them, but I don't. What I do is I seem to revise as I go.
Edward Hirsch
#36. Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny - and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).
Stephen Jay Gould
#37. I am a woman with wings,' I once wrote and will revise these words again. 'I am a woman with wings dancing with other women with wings.' In a voiced community, we all flourish.
Terry Tempest Williams
#38. Revision plays a very large role in writing. Sometimes it seems to be all revision. And the longer I write, the more I revise-until it is completely right.
Ellen Hunnicutt
#39. Some have been tempted to revise Jesus' command to read, Go ye into all the world, keep your blood pressure down, and, lo, I will make you a well-adjusted personality.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#40. My usual route is, I do a play at South Coast Rep, then there's time between and I revise it, and then I take it to New York.
Richard Greenberg
#41. Khaddar is an attempt to revise and reverse the process and establish a better relationship between the cities and villages.
Mahatma Gandhi
#42. I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem.
James Schuyler
#44. When I am king, I will revise the sexual bases system so that getting to first base will include oral sex and sodomy!
Adam Carolla
#45. I revise the manuscript till I can't read it any longer, then I get somebody to type it. Then I revise the typing. Then it's retyped again. Then there's a third typing, which is the final one. Nothing should then remain that offends the eye.
Robert Graves
#46. It's never too late - in fiction or in life - to revise.
Nancy Thayer
#47. Let's revise the old adage for our times. All that it requires for evil to succeed is that enough lazy, stupid bastards believe everything they're told.
Karen Traviss
#48. I write a line and then I revise the line and then I write two lines and then I revise lines one and two and then I write one, two and three and I revise one and two and then I write seven and eight and then I see that should be line four and I continually work it over as I go.
Edward Hirsch
#49. Continually revise your relationship to God until the only certainty you have is not that you are faithful, but that He is.
Oswald Chambers
#50. Others can't stand to revise; instead they decide they're avant-garde, so everybody who doesn't like their work is unenlightened. (Note: being avant-garde is now ... well, garde.)
Mary Karr
#51. 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
#52. I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.
John Dufresne
#53. We write while sleepwalking and revise when awake.
Marty Rubin
#54. Don't think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we've acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act.
Steven Pressfield
#55. I love having written. Sometimes I love writing. I love to revise. Revising is my favorite part of writing.
Gail Carson Levine
#58. If you will let your dominant intention be to revise and improve the content of the story you tell every day of your life, it is our absolute promise to you that your life will become that ever-improving story.
Esther Hicks
#59. We ought not to endeavor to revise history according to our latter day notions of what things ought to have been, or upon the theory that the past is simply a reflection of the present
Russell Kirk
#60. The advice I would offer to any writer is that even when you think you have revised your book to the point where you cannot look at it again, it is time to sit down and revise it some more.
Michael Korda
#61. I've always found it best to have a routine. I go to my study at the same time every day and climb into my bay window. I may not be inspired every day, but on the days I am, I need to be in place to write. If I'm not particularly inspired, I'll revise or do research or correspondence.
Diane Ackerman
#62. I appreciate you more because of the road I've traveled. My story brought me to you, and I wouldn't revise a word of my past if it led me any where but to your door.
Aaron Polson
#63. 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
#64. Study yourself; it should be the first subject you learn and the one you revise each and every day
Evan Sutter
#65. One can revise the rules, shift the goal posts, but to do so is just to conjure a chimera and mask it as a novum.
Hal Duncan
#66. Get up and make notes on the books that you have, reflect on these notes and order more books, get up again, revise the hypothesis, and figure out a new plan of action. Repeat, making sure to leave no cracks open through which the gray fog of depression can penetrate. I
Barbara Ehrenreich
#67. Whoever won the war, would revise the history.
Toba Beta
#68. I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.
Peter Orner
#69. In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.
Mary Oliver
#70. Trust your imagination. Don't be afraid to fail. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.
Jeff VanderMeer
#71. We need to profoundly revise all of our taxes and charges. The aim is to tax pollution - notably fossil fuels - more, and tax work less
Nicolas Sarkozy
#72. Rewrite and revise. Do not be afraid to seize what you have and cut it to ribbons ... Good writing means good revising.
William Strunk Jr.
#73. At another level, though, poems can craft an eraser - we can't revise the past, but poems allow us some malleability, an increased freedom of response, comprehension, feeling. Choice, what choices are possible for any given person, is another theme that's run through my work from the start.
Jane Hirshfield
#74. I revise and revise and revise. Any editor of mine will tell you how crappy my early drafts are. Revisions are about clarifying and evoking feelings in the reader in the same way they were once evoked in me.
Mary Karr
#75. Each week I am forced to revise my original opinion that Facebook is a great innovation for keeping people in touch, to believing that it is merely a canvas for members to act out strange, unresolved conflicts and desires.
Emily Yoffe
#76. I always revise when I publish in a book. So versions in magazines are sometimes slightly different.
Rigoberto Gonzalez
#77. I've found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.
Don Roff
#78. The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting ... Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur.
Sol Stein
#79. There's only one absolute rule in writing: None of us gets it right the first time. Revise, reverse, reinvent, re-vision.
Jane Yolen
#80. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly.
Susan Cain
#81. Yes, hypothetically, western Catholicism could revise the theme of celibacy ... But for the moment, I am in favor of maintaining celibacy, with the pros and the cons it has, because we have ten centuries of more good experiences than bad ones.
Pope Francis
#83. I'm not a speed writer. I write slowly and revise obsessively. The end result tends to be good. That's where my strength is.
Patrick Rothfuss
#84. Cut the ending. Revise the script. The man of her dreams is a girl.
Julie Anne Peters
#85. When I create a character, it happens in layers. The more I write and revise, the better I understand the characters.
Susan Campbell Bartoletti
#86. I revise a lot while I'm drafting, often going back to the beginning again and again to revise because I've changed massive things about the story. By the time I get to the end of a first draft, I've been through the beginning lots of times.
Holly Black
#87. It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give.
William, Saroyan
#88. The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a "Christian" (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I.
Soren Kierkegaard
#89. There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
John Irving
#90. It's difficult for me to imagine any scene differently because I've read the book so many times. The book, as a whole, seems like a document that wouldn't withstand any changes at this point. Or perhaps I simply can't imagine having to revise it again.
Mary J. Miller
#91. I have always felt," Nathan said, "that the truth is simply the truth. And perhaps does not exist for us to bend and revise. Or even filter to suit the feelings of those we love and want to protect.
Catherine Ryan Hyde
#92. I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.
A.J. Ayer
#93. 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
#94. But if the UN cannot or will not revise its rules in ways that establish beyond question the legality of the measures the United States must take to protect the American people, then we should unashamedly and explicitly reject the jurisdiction of these rules.
Richard Perle
#95. It depends on the book and what else is going on during my life, but it usually takes me about six months to write and revise the first draft.
Janette Rallison
#96. If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn't wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.
Donald Hall
#97. Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.
Fredric Jameson
#98. I hate editing. I love to write, but I hate to reread my stuff. To revise.
Barry Hannah
#99. Jesus was a white man, too. Its like we have, hes a historical figure thats a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?
Megyn Kelly
#100. But there was no way to know, and no way to go back. I could not revise. I had been who I had been, and so I largely remained.
Kathleen Rooney
