Top 338 Rewrite Quotes & Sayings

Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don't work. You will find that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right. Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work on the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.

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.

I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

Where I thrive is with my hands on the keyboard or my pen on the paper. One of the things I get to do is I get to rewrite. I rewrite, and I work hard on my scripts. You can rewrite until you're 'perfect,' and that's something that's safe for me.

It drives me crazy to do readings of my books, because if I read anything I've written in the past, I'd like to almost rewrite everything. If I could, I'd completely rewrite Fargo Rock City, and every sentence would be just slightly different. In all likelihood, most of them wouldn't be any better. Some of them would just be changed back to whatever form they used to be, before I second-guessed myself the first time.

You can't rewrite nothing, but you can rewrite 90 pages of sh*t. Now you've got your sh*t on the page, you can go work.

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

I can't. You can't rewrite the past.

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.

I don't really revise. I tend to rewrite.

I write longhand and I type and I rewrite on the typed pages.

I won't rewrite on set, but I'll just trim the fat.

I can't go on to page two until I can get page one as perfect as I can make it. That might mean I will rewrite and rewrite page one 20, 30, 50, 100 times.

Don't document bad code - rewrite it.

When I write something, I constantly rewrite.

I did a complete rewrite of 650 pages in two weeks.

No matter what, the way to learn to program is to write code and rewrite it and see it used and rewrite again. Reading other people's code is invaluable as well.

That is as true for fiction or non-fiction. The writer has to really know their subject. It is really important to remember that the readers are a lot smarter than the writer. Also, good writing has to do with rewriting. You will never get it right the first time. So you rewrite and rewrite again until you get it right. Until you, and the reader, will be able to visualize what you're writing about.

Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.

In the TV business, you've got to write fast, and someone will tell you, 'Can you rewrite this episode before... 6 P.M.?' So that's when you rewrite it. You can't wait for the muse to show up.

I do not rewrite unless I am absolutely sure that I can express the material better if I do rewrite it.

In the TV business, you've got to write fast, and someone will tell you, "Can you rewrite this episode before... 6 p.m.?" So that's when you rewrite it. You can't wait for the muse to show up.

My writing process is very feedback-based. When I do stand-up, I listen to the audience. I try to understand what's connecting, what's not connecting, and then rewrite, rewrite and rewrite.

Usually I will hear a sample, think of a theme and then it will take me a couple of days to write down some lyrics. Then I will decide that I hate those lyrics and rewrite. Then I will change all the music around. Then I will rewrite all the lyrics again. I am a bit of a perfectionist although you would never know it because all my songs are like chopped up and @#$%& up, but you see that's on purpose.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.

It's the prerogative of the writer to rewrite the world into one he would like to exist.

I didn't become a good writer until I learned how to rewrite. And I don't just mean fixing spelling and adding a comma. I rewrite each of my books five or six times, and each time I change huge portions of the story.

Anyone of any age, any race, any background, any education - if they write an interesting enough book - can become a published author. What it takes is imagination, the ability to put words on a paper in an interesting, perhaps even unique way, the fortitude to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, and polish, edit, polish, edit until the story sort of sings. I think everyone has a story inside him, but only a few have the persistence and, of course, the interest, to write it down and see it through.

. . . don't rewrite unless you know what you're trying to do.

I never think of an entire book at once. I always just start with a very small idea. In 'Holes,' I just began with the setting; a juvenile correctional facility located in the Texas desert. Then I slowly make up the story, and rewrite it several times, and each time I rewrite it, I get new ideas, and change the old ideas around.

See, you can't rewrite, 'cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie, and you betray your own thoughts. To rethink the flow and the rhythm, the tumbling out of the words, is a betrayal, and it's a sin, Martin, it's a sin." --Hank (Kerouac)to Martin (Ginsberg) in the film Naked Lunch

Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

I tend to write things seven times before I show them to my editor. I write them seven times, then I take them on tour, read them like a dozen times on tour, then go back to the room and rewrite, read and rewrite... I would never show him a first draft, because then he's really going to be sick of it by the twelfth draft.

I can't rewrite history.

...what I write is smarter than I am. Because I can rewrite it.

I don't want to rewrite history.

Here's the secret to finishing that first book. Don't rewrite as you go.

You can't rewrite the history books; you can't eliminate the impact of my work and my characters.

We must rewrite our story from one of fear to one of celebration.

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.

There were guys in 'The State' who would take one script and rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it and fight for it for a whole season, and after a couple of seasons, you realized that doesn't work. You have to just be willing to throw something away, no matter how good it is, and write a better joke.

My writing process is very feedback based - I listen to the audience. I try to understand what's connecting, what's not connecting... and then rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite. Chris Gethard and I have been on the road a lot together. When we get on the bus at night, we talk about the jokes that didn't work and the joke possibilities that could work. I think this is a little different from other writers.

I really - I don't take my work that seriously, and I think that's what keeps me loose. If I try to write, if I catch myself trying to write, I'll fall right on my face. I'll see it. If I see in the prose that I'm - 'Boy, look at me writing,' I rewrite it. I rewrite it because I don't, because I think it's distracting.

Life is a first draft... with NO rewrite.

I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.

I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.

Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.

I'm a perfectionist - I could rewrite forever.

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.

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft. I can write more quickly than I can read.

I don't feel a need to prove anything or rewrite my legacy.

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

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.

I wanted to rewrite how rock music was perceived.

That's where the inspiration was and so the more that you rewrite and the more you rewrite and the more the numbnuts are coming in to give you notes then the more problems you run into and the more it suddenly doesn't seem like the movie, the story, the characters changed, watered down and we don't have that with this.

The curves of your lips rewrite history.