Writer Revision Quotes

#1. All my friends are dead, or else they're not feeling too good.

Tom Waits

#2. If the truth were to be known, everyone would be wearing a scarlet letter of one form or another.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

#3. The bagel is a lonely roll to eat all by yourself because in order for the true taste to come out you need your family. One to cut the bagels, one to toast them, one to put on the cream cheese and the lox, one to put them on the table and one to supervise.

Gertrude Berg

#4. The writer's life is a life of revisions.

Jonathan Franzen

#5. The photograph is the only picture that can truly convey information, even if it is technically faulty and the object can barely be identified. A painting of a murder is of no interest whatever; but a photograph of a murder fascinates everyone.

Gerhard Richter

#6. I believe that there are barriers, educational barriers, cultural barriers, societal barriers, that are keeping people from accessing the promise of a vibrant free enterprise economy.

Marco Rubio

#7. We could have touched the stars. Instead, you brought them to us. We didn't have to seek the heavens when we had you here with us now.

Jim Krueger

#8. The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.

Jean Rhys

#9. The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.

Henry Green

#10. People really listen to your lyrics if you rap. So, I had to make sure that they were clear and concise.

Mark Salling

#11. Like every great writer before or since, Jonson understood that the best poets 'are both made and born'. That all great writing has to be hammered out and all great poets stand or fall by that 'second heat', their laboured revision.

James Shapiro

#12. It all tears away from us," he says, "like paper.

Robert Jackson Bennett

#13. Emily Blunt helped me study for a Spanish test, and I got an A+ on it!

Lilla Crawford

#14. One of the things I like to do during an 'overhaul' revision is bust out my highlighters and colored pens. Tools like these make me feel like a real writer.

Lisa Graff

#15. Pandora, possessed by the unleashed contents of her box.

Salman Rushdie

#16. Why?" said Zarathustra. "Thou askest why? I do not belong to those who may be asked after their Why.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#17. I'm not going to hurt her. I know she's special and I tried to stay away, but when I'm with I don't feel so cold and alone.

Abbi Glines

#18. I'm an obsessive writer who needs and loves revision. Writing helps me learn and helps me teach.

Kiese Laymon

#19. Finding pleasure in revision is the thing I would most strongly advise to people. It's not something I did as a younger writer; I learned it over time.

Antonya Nelson