Will Champion Quotes

I always want to make sure the book I'm writing is the best book I can deliver.

When you finish a thing you ought to be able to say to yourself: 'There, I am willing to stand for that piece of work. It is not pretty well done; it is done as well as I can do it; done to a complete finish. I will stand for that. I am willing to be judged by it.'

I think all good writing is a struggle. To write as well as you feel you can has to be a struggle, almost by definition, because you could always improve.

I always try to write the best I can.

I give each book however long it needs to be the best I can make it.

You have to pay attention to the work on the page and make it as good as possible because it could be your last.

It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

There is no room in the world, as you say, for second rate work.

Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.

To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect.

I don't care how small the parts are, as long as they're good.

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.

Every really good book was written a little at a time, over time, in tremendous confusion and doubt.

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

When I write a book, I'm making it the best book I can.

I felt like there was a certain standard that we held 'Strangers' to, so I think about that whenever I work on something.

It's not communism, it's shouldn't be that everybody gets a try no matter how good or bad they are. It's our profession and our art, so we should eventually strive to be working with the best people.

Quality. That's the key. Everything I do, I want it to have that stamp that people like Jay Z, for instance, have on all the things they touch.

The fact that my songs take a long time to write is no guarantee of their excellence.

Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can enable it to be.

Art is a by-product of an honest and successful attempt to do something well.

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.

Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality... that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hallmark of excellence.

[Rewriting is] a whole other art form; it's about craftsmanship.

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.