A Quote by Bernard DeVoto

The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it. — © Bernard DeVoto
The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.
In collage you're doing it in stages so you're not actually doing it right there. You first of all draw it on the paper, then you cut it up, then you paste it down, then you change it, then you shove it about, then you may paint bits of it over, so actually you're not making the picture there and then, you're making it through a process, so it's not so spontaneous.
Change happens when you understand what you want to change so deeply that there is no reason to do anything but act in your own best interest.
Cause there's only one reason for doing anything that you set out to do. if you don't want to be the best, then there's no reason going out and trying to accomplish anything.
I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.
Putting down on paper what you have to say is an important part of writing, but the words and ideas have to be shaped and cleaned, cleaned as severely as a dog cleans a bone, cleaned until there's not a shred of anything superfluous.
It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.
The first song that I wrote was when I was with The Del Rios. I was like 14 years old but I was always putting my thoughts down on paper even before then because it was like an escape - a way of unleashing all the stuff.
In the end I'm just doing my job, I'm working hard, I'm putting my best foot forward and the criticism is not going to change anything I've done or will do in the future.
I remember the absolute joy I used to get out of writing. The purity of imagining something and then putting it down on paper - it was such a pleasure. I read whatever I could get my hands on, from 'Great Expectations' to 'The Thorn Birds.'
I try not to have anything too much going on between waking up and getting to work. I like to just be really fresh when I sit down. I always have my best ideas, like, within five minutes of starting. And then the rest of the day is just kind of putting in time.
If you write something down on paper, it becomes an actual goal. Before you write it down, it's a thought, a dream that may or may not get done.
There are films that look very interesting when on paper, but things change while shooting. At times, things changed during post-production, and I see no reason to blame anything on anyone. It is a collaborative effort. If it failed, we should face it.
To me, that is the essence of me as a photographer. It is those ideas, working with them, formulating them and eventually putting them down on paper, photographing them and then going on to the next step.
I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
I have difficulty putting words in peoples' mouths. The best dialogue is very, very thin dialogue; you let people improvise and then basically you record what they've improvised and then write it down.
All I liked to do when I was a kid was draw. My childhood was like my adult life: drawing pictures with my brother, putting the comics up on the glass window, and tracing the characters onto tracing paper or drawing paper and then coloring them. That and making things was all we ever did.
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