A Quote by Tony Hillerman

The first Chapter Law is, "Don't spend much time on it. You're going to have to rewrite it."

Tony Hillerman

Quote Topics

Chapter First Going Law Much Rewrite Spend Time

Quote Author

Tony Hillerman
American - Author
May 27, 1925 - October 26, 2008

I write a very rough first draft of every chapter, then I rewrite every chapter. I try to get it down in the first rewrite, but some chapters I can't get quite right the third time. There are some I go over and over and over again.

Robert Stone

I try and get it right the first time. I may rewrite a sentence four or five times, but I rarely go back and kill a whole page and rewrite it.

Matt Ridley

Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, don't be precious about your first draft, it's an architectural blueprint to a whole building, be your own worst critic, confront your weakness and remember it's a craft.

Tobsha Learner

We spend a lot of time at the ranch. And June and I spend as much time as w can with the kids. I learned with my first two how fast they grow up.

Fred MacMurray

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

Anton Chekhov

Good writing is writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. Sometimes, it happens to work right away, and that's amazing. But most of the time, it happens to work, and then you rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, and maybe it even comes back to the thing it was in the first place, but then you know for sure that it is good, and it's what you wanted to do.

Kate Beaton

I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The time-use studies also show that employed women spend as much time as nonworking women in direct interactions with their children. Employed mothers spend as much time as those at home reading to and playing with their young children, although they do not, of course, spend as much time simply in the same room or house with the children.

Sandra Scarr

I'm a great planner, so before I ever write chapter 1, I work out what happens in every chapter and who the characters are. I usually spend a year on the outline.

Ken Follett

I recommend for people, if this is the first time they're going to see an eclipse, don't get bogged down in trying to take pictures of it, because you'll spend much too much time fiddling around with cameras. Unless you've got the strength to just take a quick snapshot and let it go at that and not mess with the camera. Try to drink it in with your eyes and enjoy it.

Fred Espenak

I rewrite everything, almost idiotically. I rewrite and work and work, and rewrite and rewrite some more.

Laura Z. Hobson

Everything you've ever read of mine is first-draft. This is one of the peculiarities of the comics field. By the time you're working on chapter three of your masterwork, chapter one is already in print. You can't go back and suddenly decide to make this character a woman, or have this one fall out of a window.

Alan Moore

At this point in my life, I'm not going to spend a lot of time focusing on dissatisfaction with who I am, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time tempering my personality. Whatever job I have next, I'm going to be somebody who wants to get things done.

Christine Quinn

There are several studies done of peasant uprisings where the first chapter might be 'conditions in that area' and so the conditions are bad, and then the second chapter is a kind of conjectural event, somebody's shot and then there's an uprising. But there's no consideration, no chapter on preparation.

Vijay Prashad

The idea was that we would decide the order when we looked at the proofs. I remember Brion Gysin saying "Well, why change it? It's perfect the way it is, the way it came from the printer." Made one major change, that is, the first chapter that came from the printers, which would be the beginning, we moved to the end. The first chapter became the last chapter. There's no actual cutups in Naked Lunch.