Top 90 Revising Quotes & Sayings

I listen to a lot of different stuff, from Mozart to Johnny Dowd to Monster Magnet. I don't listen to music while I'm writing a draft, but I do listen to it when I'm revising.

I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.

I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.

One could go on revising a prose page forever whereas there is a point in a poem when one knows it is done forever.

The problem with memory is that is changes whatever it touches. It is never that accurate. As a result, I end up modifying and revising my own experiences. It's myth making.

I think I regard any history in quotes, because just like science, we're constantly revising science, we're constantly revising history.

The usual way - through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

Constitutionally, a revising chamber is useful and important. The first occasion I know of in history when the Lords fulfilled this role was in 1539 when Henry VIII's act of proclamations was neutered by their lordships so effectively that the Act was repealed in 1547.

Most philosophies wrap their seekers in a strict belief system. By virtue of what they include, they exclude everything else, especially some vital realizations. Periodically revising our philosophy of life as we live it is, therefore, a critically valuable exercise.

For me, intuition comes from experience. After years of experience, a person will have, if they have been paying attention and revising their thinking and behavior, intuitions about their area of experience.

Growth has no limit at Reliance. I keep revising my vision. Only when you dream it you can do it.

Never think of revising as fixing something that is wrong. That starts you off in a negative frame of mind. Rather think of it as an opportunity to improve something you already love.

When the dawn light is coursing through the slats in the shutters at last, making thin stripes on the floor, she, tossing, decides that for every human soul there must surely be a possible childhood worth living, but once it slips by, there isn’t any reclaiming it or revising it.

The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

I do a lot of revising. Certain chapters six or seven times. Occasionally you can hit it right the first time. More often, you don't.

I have always had a hard time revising my work as a journalist, which was never much of a problem. You always have editors as backstops. Their job is to perfect your story. Most of them want to be useful.

I keep an elaborate calendar for my characters detailing on which dates everything happens. I'm constantly revising this as I go along. It gives me the freedom to intricately plot my story, knowing it will at least hold up on a timeline.

John Milton famously claimed, "Fame is the spur" for the poet, and indeed when we consider the six years he spent writing Paradise Lost, and the additional years revising it, from 1664 to 1674, we may allow that spur.

All I ever wanted to do was play football. I was never one for revising, and I only left school with three O Levels.

Most writers want to share their essay or book much too quickly. Those who accept the pain of hard work and revising are those who get published.

I enjoy writing plays most. I haven't written a radio play in a while and I don't write short stories anymore because the process of submitting them depressed me. I really enjoy revising novels, but drafting them can be a pain.

I never see songs as permanent. I'm always in a state of revising everything.

Our past is a novel that we are constantly revising.

I spend a lot of time revising. I'm not somebody who can move slowly.

The idea of going back to school and revising for exams would be hellish. As an actor, my form of revising is learning scenes, but to start going through biology, chemistry, and all of those sciences would be just a nightmare.

If I revise a children's book, if I'm spending three hours on the first draft, I'm probably spending 30 minutes revising it. I mean, come on! But to redo a painting? That's hard work.

It seems the deeper, truer personality of the artist only emerges in the making of decisions... in refusing and accepting, changing and revising.

The job of a legislator is much more fixing existing law, revising it, improving it, than it is passing something that doesn't exist.

I thought of the idea of Summly in March or April 2011. I was 15 years old and I was revising for some kind of history exam. The problem was I was trying to find information that was useful to me. When you type into Google an esoteric term, you get quite a lot of stuff that's not relevant.

Revising stuff lately, I was shocked to see how often my characters scratched their ankles, felt their feet, and touched their own ears.

Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.

I write quickly with a sense of urgency. I don't edit myself out of existence, meaning I'll try to write 50 or 60 pages before I start rereading, revising and editing. That just helps with my confidence.

When revising, consider whether you have written anything that will hurt or offend a member of your immediate family. If the answer is no, go back and add something.

I'm constantly revising and updating a piece until it's finally recorded. Once it's recorded, then it's over.

When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.

I work on one page, revising and polishing until I can't make it better, then move on to the next. Some pages might get 20 or more drafts before I move on.

The rigors of creativity - the self-doubt, the revising, the solitude - do require a kind of self-consumption. It comes at a cost; a cost that isn't for everyone.

I love revising. If you demystify the process, it comes down to four strategies: what can I do to make the draft better; what should I cut out to make it stronger; what do I need to do to clarify it; and finally, what should I reposition.

I believe Jack Smith might have written THE BOOK on writing and revising for publication. Clean, direct, succinct--a book that is full of pure wisdom and truth, but also amazing technical advice.

Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully.

Men have jobs, while women have Roles: Mother, Wife, Goddess, Temptress, etc. That's probably why it's so hard for women to rewrite the rules. You're not just changing a job description, but an ancient myth. You're revising the Bible, Poetry, Legend and Psychoanalytic Scripture.

I love having written. Sometimes I love writing. I love to revise. Revising is my favorite part of writing.

One must keep one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been following and revising and revising for 72 years I remember one detail. All my life I have been honest - comparatively honest. I could never use money I had not made honestly - I could only lend it.

I think I regard any history in quotes, because just like science, we're constantly revising science, we're constantly revising history. There's no question that various victors throughout history have flat out lied about certain events or written themselves into things, and then you come along and you find out that this disproves that.

I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

I think about how I conceptualize the audience. The trick is that they've got to be smarter and more worldly than me. So as I'm revising, I'm keeping that in mind. I cannot condescend, even a little bit. Every single choice that I make is motivated by that.

Once I start writing, I am a huge reviser. To me writing is revising. I probably turn over every sentence that I write, to see if I have the rhythm right. That's why my first drafts take a really long time.

The voice of a person thinking, discovering, revising, is ever-present without any loss in grace or ease.

After I wrote 'Sweet Summer Day,' Jihyo did the guide recording. We did that in our apartment, revising the lyrics together, allocating parts to members and discussing the song together.

If things are going well I can easily spend twelve hours a day writing, but not writing writing, just thinking and revising and taking a comma out and putting it back in.

Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.

Rewrite and revise. Do not be afraid to seize what you have and cut it to ribbons ... Good writing means good revising.

I have a hard time revising sentences, because I spend an inordinate amount of time on each sentence, and the sentence before it, and the sentence after it.

Revising a screenplay is much more frustrating than revising a song because you have to read through the entire work again while you are changing stuff. It is a lot easier to edit a song.

I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again.

I do so much revising as I go along; I wonder how I could write books if I hadn't grown up in the computer age. I think I'd be a very different writer. I find myself cutting and pasting, changing things around and deleting whole paragraphs constantly.

I do a lot of revising on paper. Sometimes I think I should just write longhand - what I type reads very different once I print it out.

I keep an elaborate calendar for my characters detailing on which dates everything happens. Im constantly revising this as I go along. It gives me the freedom to intricately plot my story, knowing it will at least hold up on a timeline.