Revision Quotes

I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

I reserve the right to evolve. What I think and feel today is subject to revision tomorrow.

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

The moment clients realize that revisions are not an all-you-can-eat buffet, suddenly they realize they are not hungry.

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.

I am particularly horrified by the use of propaganda and the manipulation of the truth and the revision of history.

Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.

Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence.

I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?

I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest.

Revision is not going back and fussing around, but going forward into the process of creation

I work hard, I work very hard. All the books at least 30 revisions.

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.

Memory offers up its gifts only when jogged by something in the present. It isn't a storehouse of fixed images and words, but a dynamic associative network in the brain that is never quiet and is subject to revision each time we retrieve an old picture or old words.

Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.

All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.

My life is constant revision but it's not revision, a lot of it is for the first time.

Science reserves the highest reward for those of you who disprove our most cherished beliefs. At any moment someone from any walk of life could come forward and be responsible for a complete revision of our view of everything.

There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain.

Through revision, I enter the realm of the unspeakable and find the words that have eluded me.

Sometimes I would write while inspired and sometimes I would write through sheer force of will, and in revision the writing that I thought was "dead" very frequently turned out to be better because it was more free of ego.

Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes.

If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.

Most poets' revisions are disastrous. They buckle and dent what was originally forged at a red-hot heat.

Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.

Revision means throwing out the boring crap and making what’s left sound natural.

The novel is never really in the first draft. The novel really happens in the revisions.

Schools of science and physics replacing each other at a faster and faster rate. Just the nature of our world is constant revision, constant...negation of previous beliefs, and so...the whole world is a twist ending. Every week is a twist ending.

But Blake's voices returned to dictate revisions.

I'm perfectly proud of the work I did, looking back at it. I know I've had a bit of a revision since my 'Big Finish' stories came out.

Serbia will neither allow a revision of history, nor will it forget who are the main culprits in World War I.

Sometimes the best revision of a poem is a new poem.

I place a lot of emphasis on process and revision because I believe that all of my students can become better writers through hard work.

Revision is its own reward.

What force is yanking at our sleeves? This process of self-revision and self-correction is so common we don't even notice. But it's a miracle.

The writer’s life is a life of revisions.

According to one study by the United States Geological survey, 86 percent of oil reserves in the United States are the result not of what is estimated at the time of discovery but of the revisions and additions that come with further development.

A novel which has been too much worked over often goes flat, and no amount of laborious revision can take the place of careful planning beforehand.

Stories, as much as we like to talk about them, retrospectively, as emanations of theme or worldview or intention, occur primarily as technical objects when they're being written. Or at least they do for me. They're the result of thousands of decisions made at speed during revision.

Youth is the season of receptivity, and should be devoted to acquirement; and manhood of power--that demands an earnest application. Old age is for revision.

But I had to kill you, because the only other possible ending was us doing it, which I wasn't really emotionally ready to write about at ten.' 'Fair enough,' I say. 'But in the revision, I want to get some action.

Revision is a good impulse to have.

This assumes an upward revision of the European Budget, which is precisely what Jacques Chirac refuses to do. On the contrary, he has demanded a reduction.

The contents of a house can trigger all sorts of revisions to family history.