Revise Quotes & Sayings

If you don't listen to the question entirely, then
you are going to revise your answers frequently. — Toba Beta

When I create a character, it happens in layers. The more I write and revise, the better I understand the characters. — Susan Campbell Bartoletti

If you try to write 1,000 words a day, as I do, after 100 days you'll look up and have a book. It may be a mess, and you may have to revise it 50 times, but you can't revise it if you haven't written it. — Justin Cronin

Always revise... — George Thomas Clark

A man may go through life and remain ignorant of himself he may think himself as other than he truly is and he may die with this illusion still intact because no circumstance of his life has obliged him to revise it. — Barry Unsworth

When you put your characters in a dire situation, they often do things that surprise even you, so you have to go back and revise your original conception of who they are. — Hallie Ephron

Every time I revise, life just gets a little worse for my protagonist. — B.K. Raine

I love having written. Sometimes I love writing. I love to revise. Revising is my favorite part of writing. — Gail Carson Levine

I am a woman with wings,' I once wrote and will revise these words again. 'I am a woman with wings dancing with other women with wings.' In a voiced community, we all flourish. — Terry Tempest Williams

I told her how I thought you could always revise your life, how you could work and work on it, finesse the details, see if what you're saying is what you wanted to be saying. — John Dufresne

One can revise the rules, shift the goal posts, but to do so is just to conjure a chimera and mask it as a novum. — Hal Duncan

I had to revise all my feelings once again. I pulled out the dregs of affection from the glass of misunderstanding to rebuild my faith. I had to reinvent the cause for love, as it were. It was something I had to draw inside me, a real portrait of her, not just the inspiration but the girl as a whole, with all her shortcomings to be able to love her again. — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world. — Fredric Jameson

There are diverse styles of learning, problem solving, and a range of methodologies that a person can draw from in order to structure their thoughts or intentionally revise ingrained personal habits including both systematic and unsystematic approaches. Problems solving styles are reflective of personal differences in the manner that people prefer to position themselves in respect to the phenomena in the world and efficiently react to alterations in the external environment. Problem solving strategies encompass numerous variances in what manner a person approaches new concepts, how they manage their daily affairs, and respond effectively to new opportunities and complex challenges. — Kilroy J. Oldster

By definition, there can't be any particular feeling associated with simply *being* wrong. ndeed, the whole reason it's possible to be wrong is that, while it is happening, you are oblivious to it. (...) You are like the coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, after he has gone off the cliff but before he has looked down. Literatlly in his case, and figuratively in yourse, you are already in trouble when you feel like you're still on solid ground. So I should revise myself: it does feel like something to be wrong. It feels like being right. — Kathryn Schulz

Revise. Revisit. Reinvent. — Erica Alex

We need to profoundly revise all of our taxes and charges. The aim is to tax pollution - notably fossil fuels - more, and tax work less — Nicolas Sarkozy

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot. — Erin Morgenstern

Students often have such a lofty idea of what a poem is, and I want them to realize that their own lives are where the poetry comes from. The most important things are to respect the language; to know the classical rules, even if only to break them; and to be prepared to edit, to revise, to shape. — Yusef Komunyakaa

When I finish something, I try and read it as if I've never read it before. Mostly I'm looking to see what the themes are, what it's About. When I revise, I'm trying to buttress those themes, highlight the things that add to them, remove the things that detract from them, and also make it look like I knew what I was doing all along. — Neil Gaiman

The Exile In July 587 BCE, Babylonian soldiers broke through Jerusalem's walls, ending a starvation siege that had lasted well over a year. They burned the city and Solomon's temple and took its king and many other leaders to Babylon as captives, leaving others to fend for themselves in the destroyed land. Many surrounding countries disappeared altogether when similar disasters befell them. But Judah did not. Instead, the period scholars most often call the "Babylonian exile" inspired religious leaders to revise parts of Scripture that had been passed down to them. It also sparked the writing of entirely new Scriptures and the revision of ideas about God, creation, and history. Much of what is called the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament was written, edited, and compiled during and after this national tragedy. — Walter Brueggemann

You can't revise a blank page. — Leonard Wolf

I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards. Okay, so I should revise my standards; I'm out of step. I should yield to reality. I have never yielded to reality. That's what SF is all about. If you wish to yield to reality, go read Philip Roth; read the New York literary establishment mainstream bestselling writers ... .This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just 'What if' - it's 'My God; what if' - in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming. — Philip K. Dick

If an organization is not able to change its model of itself unless and until completely clear-cut evidence accumulates, that organization will tend to learn late, that is, it will revise its model of vulnerabilities only after serious events occur. — David D. Woods

In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it. — Mary Oliver

The rich are all alike, to revise Tolstoy's famous words, but the poor are poor in their own particular ways.

Any reasonably intelligent reader could blow that generalization apart in the time it takes to write it. But as with most generalizations, a truth lies behind it. Ultimately, what binds the rich together is that they have more money, lots more. For one reason or another, the poor don't have enough of it. But poverty doesn't bind the poor together as much as wealth and the need to protect it bind the rich. If it did, we would hear the rattle of tumbrels in the streets. One hears mutterings, but the chains have not yet been shed. — William McPherson

When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. — Susan Cain

You should look ahead now and decide what you want to do with your lives. Fix clearly in your mind what you want to be one year from now, five years, ten years, and beyond. Write your goals and review them regularly. Keep them before you constantly, record your progress, and revise them as circumstances dictate. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing. — Dean Koontz

Human being's possess the cognitive ability to survey and study the biological and cultural constraints that influence us in order to gain an enhanced understanding of who each of us are. Comprehension of what comprises a self allows human beings to monitor and regulate their thoughts and actions and therefore revise and modify their sense of self. How much conscious control we assert over our minds as well as what decisions through default we leave essentially unregulated and in the sole providence of the unconscious mind determines our self-identity. Self-identity in turns affects personal decision-making, which alters our external world. The combined impact of millions of people making conscious choices exerts a profound impact upon reality, the physical world that is constantly in flux. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I'm not a speed writer. I write slowly and revise obsessively. The end result tends to be good. That's where my strength is. — Patrick Rothfuss

I think kids abandon stories all the time. They start stories and get frustrated or get a different, better idea. I think that it is more worthwhile to stick with a story and revise it and try to finish it than abandon ship. Revisions, for any writer, are the name of the game. — Gail Carson Levine

The full implications of feminism will evolve over time, as we organize, experiment, think, analyze, and revise our ideas and strategies in light of our experiences. No theory emerges in full detail overnight; the dominant theories of our day have expanded and changed over many decades. That it will take time should not discourage us. That we might fail to pursue our ideas - given the enormous need for them in society today - is unconscionable. — Charlotte Bunch

I have always felt," Nathan said, "that the truth is simply the truth. And perhaps does not exist for us to bend and revise. Or even filter to suit the feelings of those we love and want to protect. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Clouding the exact evolution of El and Yahweh as concepts (and any other aspect of belief, for neither El nor Yahweh ever existed as anything except mind images of fervent believers) is the invariable propensity of associated religions to revise their history along the way according to subsequently popular interests. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

Study yourself; it should be the first subject you learn and the one you revise each and every day — Evan Sutter

Somewhere in the child, somewhere in the adult, there is a hard, irreducible, stubborn core of biological urgency, and biological necessity , and biological reason that culture cannot reach and that reserves the right, which sooner or later it will exercise, to judge the culture and resist and revise it. — Lionel Trilling

I've found that in business opportunities will constantly emerge or situations develop that make you revise your plans along the way. — Benjamin Cohen

I have begun to wonder what actually happens in our brains when we return to half-remembered places. What is memory's perspective? Does the man revise the boy's view or is the imprint relatively static, a vestige of what was once intimately known? — Siri Hustvedt

If you say bullshit on things come in handy,
better revise it before others say otherwise. — Toba Beta

With a pencil and paper, I could revise the world. — Alison Lurie

Successful people do work hard, but they also think before they act. They are proactive, not just reactive. Most people mentally have a sign on their desk that reads, "Don't just sit there - do something!" The best advice I ever received was to revise the sign to read, "Don't just do something - sit there! — Kenneth H. Blanchard

In 1829 Rossini was at an age which has often proven critical in the lives of musicians, painters and writers. Lapses into silence far more complete than Rossini's, creative failures, suicides, and unanticipated deaths have been common in the middle to late 30s. As Charles Rosen has noted, 'It is the age when the most fluent composer begins to lose the ease of inspiration he once possessed, when even Mozart had to make sketches and to revise'. — Richard Osborne

I think that my first impulse arises from a hypersensitivity or allergy. It seems to me that language is always used in a random, approximate, careless manner, and this distresses me unbearably. Please don't think that my reaction is the result of intolerance towards my neighbor: the worst discomfort of all comes from hearing myself speak. That's why I try to talk as little as possible. If I prefer writing, it is because I can revise each sentence until I reach the point where - if not exactly satisfied with my words - I am able at least to eliminate those reasons for dissatisfaction that I can put a finger on. Literature - and I mean the literature that matches up to those requirements - is the promised land in which language becomes what it really ought to be. — Italo Calvino

It's never too late - in fiction or in life - to revise. — Nancy Thayer

He gave me a hard smile before clapping on his helmet. It enclosed his entire head and featured a multifunction power-optic visor, holovid camera with continuous map-revise data stream, laser communication capability, and an omnifilter respirator. Like his soft-armored combat jumpsuit, it had an environmental system to keep him comfy. His belt held a Kagi sidearm, a monster commando knife in place of the usual Ivanov stunner, small flexcanteens of water, coffee and nutrigoo, and a bulb of trailblazer spray. — Julian May

A falsifiable theory is one that makes a specific prediction about what results are supposed to occur under a set of experimental conditions, so that the theory might be falsified by performing the experiment and comparing predicted to actual results. A theory or explanation that cannot be falsified falls outside the domain of science. For example, Freudian psychoanalysis, which does not make specific experimental predictions, is able to revise its theory to match any observations, in order to avoid rejecting the theory altogether. By this reckoning, Freudianism is a pseudoscience, a theory that purports to be scientific but is in fact immune to falsification. In contrast, for example, Einstein's theory of relativity made predictions (like the bending of starlight around the sun) that were novel and specific, and provided opportunities to disprove the theory by direct experimental observation.
[The folly of scientism] — Austin L. Hughes

Rewrite and revise. Do not be afraid to seize what you have and cut it to ribbons ... Good writing means good revising. — William Strunk Jr.

To ask for overt renunciation of a cherished doctrine is to expect too much of human nature. Men do not repudiate the doctrines and dogmas to which they have sworn their loyalty. Instead they rationalize, revise, and re-interpret them to meet new needs and new circumstances, all the while protesting that their heresy is the purest orthodoxy. — J. William Fulbright

Winslow says I don't understand plotting and probably I don't - I have been congratulated many times on the skill shown in my plotting when I knew damn well that the story in question had not been plotted in advance at all. My notion of a story is an interesting situation in which a human being has to cope with a problem, does so, and thereby changes his personality, character, or evaluations in some measure because the coping has forced him to revise his thinking. How h copes with it I can't plot because that depends on his character, and I don't know his what his character is until i get acquainted with him. When I can "hear the character talk" then I'm all right - he works out his own salvation. — Robert A. Heinlein

I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions. — A.J. Ayer

I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it's sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It's a very laborious process, but I love doing it. — Yann Martel

Every time we revise our history, we also revise the mythology of our history. — Laura Anne Gilman

There is no doubt that many expensive national projects may add to our prestige or serve science. But none of them must take precedence over human needs. As long as Congress does not revise its priorities, our crisis is not just material, it is a crisis of the spirit. Considering the city of New York's financial shortfall. — Nelson Rockefeller

We'll need to revise the tired assumption that people automatically become more conservative as they grow older. — Charles Kennedy

We only give credence to that which we can prove exists. Since we cannot find evidence that gods, miracles, and other supernatural things are real, we do not trouble ourselves about them. If that were to change, if Helzvog were to reveal himself to us, then we would accept the new information and revise our position."
"It seems a cold world without something ... more."
"On the contrary," said Oromis, "it is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do, instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment. I won't tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else's notions thrust upon you. You asked after our religion, and I have answered you true. Make of it what you will. — Christopher Paolini

We ought not to endeavor to revise history according to our latter day notions of what things ought to have been, or upon the theory that the past is simply a reflection of the present — Russell Kirk

That is what we have in revisionist historians. It starts with their own atheism, their own unbelief, and then they go back and attempt to revise and rewrite history in their own image. — D. James Kennedy

Whoever won the war, would revise the history. — Toba Beta

I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied. — M.J. Rose

What she knew was sand and wind and innumerable stars. The rumble in a camel's throat as it swayed over shifting dunes, its trappings jingling in time with its steps beneath her. She knew the sting of thirst and the taste of dried fruit, the glare of sun and the frigid, bone-numbing cold of the air when the sun gave her throne over to the moon. She knew that, to survive, one must often revise one's caliber, and one must completely depend upon Jesus Christ. — V.S. Carnes

Nothing can preserve the integrity of contact between individuals, except a discretionary authority in the state to revise what has become intolerable. The powers of uninterrupted usury are too great. If the accretions of vested interests were to grow without mitigation for many generations, half the population would be no better than slaves to the other half. — John Maynard Keynes

That said, in the two weeks before I leave for the Dark Days tour, I am going radio silent, which means I will be avoiding the Internet at all costs in order to revise, revise, revise. I will miss you. Tris says hi, though. — Veronica Roth

But there was no way to know, and no way to go back. I could not revise. I had been who I had been, and so I largely remained. — Kathleen Rooney

Most writers cannot afford focus groups or A/B testing, but they can ask a roommate or colleague or family member to read what they wrote and comment on it. Your reviewers needn't even be a representative sample of your intended audience. Often it's enough that they are not you. This does not mean you should implement every last suggestion they offer. Each commentator has a curse of knowledge of his own, together with hobbyhorses, blind spots, and axes to grind, and the writer cannot pander to all of them. Many academic articles contain bewildering non sequiturs and digressions that the authors stuck in at the insistence of an anonymous reviewer who had the power to reject it from the journal if they didn't comply. Good prose is never written by a committee. A writer should revise in response to a comment when it comes from more than one reader or when it makes sense to the writer herself. — Steven Pinker

My hips bristle with totems and talismans, proof that I am not simply a character in a fixed book or film. I am no single narrative. As neither Rebecca de Winter nor Jane Eyre, I am free to revise my story, to reinvent myself, my world, at any given moment. Advancing beside Archer, I am resplendent in my savage finery of seized power. In my service charge the collected blackguards of a dozen tyrants now dispatched to a lesser oblivion. My fingers, stained crimson with the blood of despots, are not the fingers which paged through the paper lives of helpless romantic heroines. No more am I a passive damsel who waits for circumstance to decide her fate; now have I become the scalawag, the swashbuckler, the Heathcliff of my dreams bent on rescuing myself. For now do I embody all the traits I had so hoped to find in Goran. Meaning: No longer am I limited. — Chuck Palahniuk

This is the eighth game in the series and when we work on a Mario Kart title, we work on courses and we create them and then we work on them again, and again, and again, and we revise until we come up with something that we think is going to be fun for everyone to play over and over again. So we have a lot of confidence in our ability to do so, but we understand what a tough challenge it is to create those courses. — Hideki Konno

Creativity itself is a joyous unlatching. The act of creative imagining, inventing, saying differently, crafting a metaphor or image, then crafting another metaphor or image when you go further or when you revise - all these take whatever you think "is" and make clear that other possibilities exist as well. The sense of possibility, the amplitude and freedom that sense of malleability brings - for me, that cannot help but be joyous. — Jane Hirshfield

Some have been tempted to revise Jesus' command to read, Go ye into all the world, keep your blood pressure down, and, lo, I will make you a well-adjusted personality. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The economists will have to revise their theories of value. — Albert Einstein

Some people write by day, others by night. Some people need silence, others turn on the radio. Some write by hand, some by typewriter or word processor, some by talking into a tape recorder. Some people write their first draft in one long burst and the revise; others can't write the second paragraph until they have fiddled endlessly with the first.

But all of them are vulnerable and all of them are tense. — William Zinsser

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. — Rita Dove

Don't think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we've acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act. — Steven Pressfield

There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly. — John Irving

Revision plays a very large role in writing. Sometimes it seems to be all revision. And the longer I write, the more I revise-until it is completely right. — Ellen Hunnicutt

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

Awful first drafts are fine - Agree with this.
If you don't finish something, you'll never get in the game. Just quell the voice in your head that says "Are you kidding? No one is going to want to read this drivel" and keep on going. You're going to revise and revise and then revise again anyway. — Jamie Freveletti

When you write, you are telling a story ... to yourself. When you revise, you are telling a story to yourself ... over and over again. — Kai Strand

Whenever I teach writing I tell them to never revise as you go. Finish the first draft. This is my writing advice. I can't do that myself. I'm lying to everybody. I write a paragraph, and then I rewrite that paragraph. I want to feel like I'm standing on firm ground before I move on to the next paragraph. Mentally, I have to do that. — Matt De La Pena

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. — Pearl S. Buck

Of all the things we are wrong about, error might well top the list ... We are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honourable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world. — Kathryn Schulz

When I am king, I will revise the sexual bases system so that getting to first base will include oral sex and sodomy! — Adam Carolla

Each of my books took roughly one and a half years to write. Some may have taken a shorter time to write the draft and a longer time to revise, while others were the opposite. — Alex Flinn

I write a line and then I revise the line and then I write two lines and then I revise lines one and two and then I write one, two and three and I revise one and two and then I write seven and eight and then I see that should be line four and I continually work it over as I go. — Edward Hirsch

When a difficult or worrying decision has to be reached, as soon as all the data are available give the matter your best thought and make your decision; having made the decision, do not revise it unless some new fact comes to your knowledge. Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile. A — Bertrand Russell

Only in your imagination can you revise. — Fay Wray

Once we begin to appreciate that the apparent destructiveness of the toddler in taking apart a flower or knocking down sand castles is in fact a constructive effort to understand unity, we are able to revise our view of the situation, moving from reprimand and prohibition to the intelligent channeling of his efforts and the fostering of discovery. — Polly Berrien Berends

I appreciate you more because of the road I've traveled. My story brought me to you, and I wouldn't revise a word of my past if it led me any where but to your door. — Aaron Polson

Sometimes I really regret that I did not live in those times when there was still so much that was new; to be sure enough much is yet unknown, but I do not think that it will be possible to discover anything easily nowadays that would lead us to revise our entire outlook as radically as was possible in the days when telescopes and microscopes were still new. — Heinrich Hertz

The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a "Christian" (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I. — Soren Kierkegaard

Continually revise your relationship to God until the only certainty you have is not that you are faithful, but that He is. — Oswald Chambers

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. — Anita Shreve

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

I paint very messy. I throw paint around. So when I let myself do the same sort of thing with my writing, and I would just write and write and write and revise, that's when I found my rhythm in writing. — Erin Morgenstern

An attempt is already underway to revise history - to leave the impression that the former president had nothing to do with Watergate. But there is no doubt about his obstruction of justice after the Watergate break-in. — John J. Sirica

It's easier to revise lousy writing than to revise a blank sheet of paper. — S.A. Bodeen

Grab a pen and put down some words - your name even - and a title: something to see, to revise, to carve, to do over in the opposite way — Jacques Barzun

If you will let your dominant intention be to revise and improve the content of the story you tell every day of your life, it is our absolute promise to you that your life will become that ever-improving story. — Esther Hicks

Well, I don't ever leave out details, in that I don't come up with information or description which I don't then use. I only ever come up with what seems to me absolutely essential to make the story work. I'm not usually an overwriter. As I revise, it's usually a matter of adding in as much vivid details as seem necessary to make the story come clear without slowing down the momentum of the story. — Kelly Link

In 1992, teachers all over the country, by the thousands, were beginning to teach the Columbus story in new ways, to recognize that to Native Americans, Columbus and his men were not heroes, but marauders. The point being not just to revise our view of past events, but to be provoked to think about today. — Howard Zinn