Dorothy Parker Quotes

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

I revise obsessively. It's important to me to have a clean page.

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

My self-editing process is intense.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

First drafts are never any good - at least, mine aren't.

When I write something, I constantly rewrite.

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

No book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.

Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.

I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline.

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.

The advice I would offer to any writer is that even when you think you have revised your book to the point where you cannot look at it again, it is time to sit down and revise it some more.

Write. Write. Write. Learn how to revise. No story is perfect straight from the keyboard.

I edit as I write. I revise endlessly. I don't go forward until I know that what I've written is as good as I can make it.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.

The whole joy of writing comes from the opportunity to go over it and make it good, one way or another.

Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

I write slowly. I actually write quickly, but I throw out so much material.

I've never been a believer in the word-count thing. I write slowly and tinker with the words and the word order, and I throw a lot of stuff out.

Writing is rewriting; rewriting is writing - from the first crossed-out word in the first sentence to the last word inserted above a caret, that most helpful handwritten stroke.

Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.

I don't do rewrites. I put all the pages in a pile next to the typewriter.

Some people like to purge out a draft and just let it go and then go back and fix it, but I'm a writer-rewriter. I can't move on until I feel like it's presentable.

I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way, and you know you're not quite there, and you're redoing it and redoing it, and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard. It's a job of tremendous anxiety for me.