Tom Stoppard Quotes

It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.

It's not what you play but what you leave out that makes the difference.

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

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

Writing is about a blank piece of paper and leaving out what’s not supposed to be there.

One of the mistakes they often make is the designers over-accessorize or over-elaborate. So you realize: this would work if they removed X and Y. And actually, that's the sort of thing that translates into writing, because a lot of the time you realize, I feel I need to add something here but actually what I need to do is subtract. And then there's always the psychodrama and the tears and the rage and the feuds.

When you write - explode - fly apart - disintegrate! Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite.

There is but one art, to omit.

With writing, we have second chances.

I always listen to what I can leave out.

I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again.

Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

My goal is to omit everything superfluous so that the essential is shown to best possible advantage.

Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

I shaved a lot off of a lot that I saw in that I like to be less is more and make everything count and not give anyone anything extra. I was what you see is what you got. It was organic. I came up with the persona. The persona is me, coupled together with a lot of my interests.

Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.

I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge.

One great aim of revision is to cut out. In the exuberance of composition it is natural to throw in - as one does in speaking - a number of small words that add nothing to meaning but keep up the flow and rhythm of thought. In writing, not only does this surplusage not add to meaning, it subtracts from it. Read and revise, reread and revise, keeping reading and revising until your text seems adequate to your thought.

I guess if editing doesn't hurt, you're probably not doing it properly. I find it quite difficult. The hardest part is believing that it's actually working and getting rid of the doubt that always creeps in.

Where there is too much, something is missing.

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.

It's actually very difficult to make something both simple and good.

[Writing is] largely a matter of application and hard work, or writing and rewriting endlessly until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. For me that usually means many, many revisions.

I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable. It's not the final thing, it's the first thing, which may just be the suggestive, vague identification of something that you have to come back to and rewrite.