Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process. — Sydney Pollack
I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command. — Lynn Abbey
We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship. — George Wald
Architecture is like writing. You have to edit it over and over so it looks effortless — Zaha Hadid
I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. — James A. Michener
One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title page, another works away at the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index. — Oliver Goldsmith
This applies to many film jobs, not just editing: half the job is doing the job, and the other half is finding ways to get along with people and tuning yourself in to the delicacy of the situation. — Walter Murch
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. — T. S. Eliot
Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator. — Vsevolod Pudovkin
It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly. — C. J. Cherryh
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better. — T. S. Eliot
Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying. — John Updike
Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed. — Elbert Hubbard
Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does. — Walter Murch
You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page. — Jodi Picoult
Short Editing And Writing Quotes
No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published. — Russell Lynes
What editors are obliged to appear to say that — Naomi Wolf
Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination. — Louise Brooks
A good writer is not someone who knows how to write- but how to rewrite — William Goldman
I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. — Peter De Vries
Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. — Stephen King
There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting. — Robert Graves
Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts. — Larry L. King
Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat. — Dorothy Parker
Editing And Writing Image Quotes
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.
Writing And Editing Quotes
Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceeding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in . . . The edit. — Will Self
You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. — Sayings
When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest. — Stephen King
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.
Editing might be a bloody trade. But knives aren't the exclusive property of butchers. Surgeons use them too. — Blake Morrison
When you finally start to write something, do not let yourself stop...even when you are convinced it's the worst garbage ever. This is the biggest caveat for beginning writers. Instead, force yourself to finish what you began, and THEN go back and edit it. — Jodi Picoult
Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. — Dave Barry
I write quickly with a sense of urgency. I don't edit myself out of existence, meaning I'll try to write 50 or 60 pages before I start rereading, revising and editing. That just helps with my confidence. — Anthony Bourdain
Be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid. — Sayings
I put myself in the place of the listener when editing my writing. The last thing that I want to do is be preached at and told who to be or what to think when listening to an artist. However, I do want to be inspired. There's a fine line. — Macklemore
Can You Edit Quotes
I always see the filming as basically going to the grocery store and buying a bunch of ingredients and that's about as far from having a dinner as you can possibly be. Then editing is the cooking, the preparation of the meal and if you don't edit it you've just got a pile of raw meat. — Casey Neistat
James Franco, acting, teaching, directing, writing, producing, photography, soundtracks, editing - is there anything you can do? — Natasha Leggero
With multimedia, everything blurs. Software takes the concept of the imagination and makes it something you can edit, tweak, and transform with digital techniques. Everything becomes an edited file. — DJ Spooky
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
The best moments can't be preconceived. I've spent a lot of time in editing rooms, and a scene can be technically perfect, with perfect delivery and facial expression and timing, and you remember all your lines, and it is dead. — Brad Pitt
If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing. — William Safire
The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service. — Stephen Sondheim
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
I always try and bring screenplay, shooting and editing into a sort of symbiotic - as close into alignment as you possibly can get them, consistent, obviously, with the resources that you've got and the time you've got available. — Paul Greengrass
Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It's like making a hard core adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You'd just end up with a sort of half hour close up of some bloke's sweaty face. — Jeremy Clarkson
I'm obviously really opinionated, but as a producer, you don't necessarily want the person you're working with to try to impress you - you want them to just be themselves. Then you can edit or mess around with what they've come up with. But you have to allow the artist that space. — Danger Mouse
Teaching Writing Quotes
Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic. — Eric Allin Cornell
I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight. — Venerable Bede
You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be. — Mario Vargas Llosa
Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.
It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words. — Anthony Doerr
Teach your students real-world writing purposes, add a teacher who models his or her struggles with the writing process, throw in lots of real-world mentor texts for students to emulate, and give our kids the time necessary to enable them to stretch as writers. — Kelly Gallagher
It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest. — Barry Mann
A good friend knows all your stories. A best friend helped you write them.
Children do not learn in school; they are babysat. It takes maybe 50 hours to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, students can teach themselves. Mainly what school does is to keep the children off the streets and out of the job market. — John Taylor Gatto
If you are not a writer, you will not understand the difficulties of writing. If you are not a writer, you will not know the fears and hopes of the writers you teach. — Mem Fox
I myself have read the writings and teachings of the heretics, polluting my soul for a while with their abominable notions, though deriving this benefit: I was able to refute them for myself and loathe them even more. — Eusebius
Writing And Thinking Quotes
When I'm writing, I'm constantly thinking about myself, because it's the only experience I have to draw on. And I don't see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience, but I know that my songs have validity to them, and that's why the fans are there. — Chester Bennington
I start to think, and then I sink
Into the paper like I was ink
When I'm writing, I'm trapped in between the lines
I escape when I finish the rhyme. — Rakim
If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. — Michel Foucault
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing. — John Adams
When I open my mouth and sing, the truth comes out. When I write, the truth comes out. I can't lie. That, I think, is one of the strongest elements of my music. When people talk about my writing as though I'm doing it from an accountant's perspective, it really pisses me off. — George Michael
I think segregation is bad, I think it's wrong, it's immoral. I'd fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don't need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write. The NAACP needs to say that. — Clarence Thomas
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow you most intense obsessions mercilessly.
I wasn't very good about juggling family and my career. I was interested in who was coming to the children's birthday party, what my son was writing. I was thinking about Legos. — Jill Clayburgh
I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion - and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way. — Melanie Martinez
But, I don't think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can't create his own Interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that's written, he becomes mechanical; he has no freedom. — Buddy Rich
I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it. — Oscar Hammerstein II
Speaking And Writing Quotes
To write well and speak well is mere vanity if one does not live well. — Bridget of Sweden
For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible. — Arthur Schopenhauer
But gentlemen, as long as I am an American Citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject. — Elijah Parish Lovejoy
You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?
Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak... surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that. — Hermann Hesse
I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is. — Barbara Christian
One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating. — Niyi Osundare
If they give you lined paper, write the other way.
The very reason for the First Amendment is to make the people of this country free to think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands. — Hugo Black
The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of Woman's Rights with all its attendant horrors on which her poor, feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety. — Queen Victoria
If you take photos, don't speak, don't write, don't analyze yourself, and don't answer any questions. — Robert Doisneau
Marches work, rallies work, civil disobedience works, direct action works, voting works, writing letters works, speaking to churches and schools works, rioting works. — Cleve Jones
Speech And Writing Quotes
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. — George Orwell
Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen. — George Orwell
Anarchists prepare for social revolution and use every means - speech, writing, or deed, whichever is more to the point; to accelerate revolutionary development. — Johann Most
I live in America. I have the right to write whatever I want. And it's equaled by another right just as powerful: the right not to read it. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend people. — Brad Thor
Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either. — Gore Vidal
I try to write in plain brown blocks of American speech but occasionally set in an ancient word or a strange word just to startle the reader a little bit and to break up the monotony of the plain American cadence. — James Laughlin
In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. — George Orwell
To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence. — Maurice Blanchot
Writing for me is a dragnet that carries everything away with it: expressions and figures of speech, postures, feelings, thoughts, troubles. In short, the lives of others. — Elena Ferrante
A letter is always better than a phone call. People write things in letters they would never say in person. They permit themselves to write down feelings and observations using emotional syntax far more intimate and powerful than speech will allow. — Alice Steinbach
The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them. — Vladimir Nabokov
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. — Edgar Allan Poe
I can’t write five words but that I change seven. — Dorothy Parker
If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow. — Louis L'Amour
The number one thing I am earnestly attracted to is intelligence. Writers are thus the pinnacle of intelligence. While actors are great and awesome, writers literally create new worlds from scratch. What is sexier than that? Personally, I don't know why every person out there isn't dating a writer. — Rachel Bloom
writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers. — Charles Bukowski
Writing is the flip side of sex - it's good only when it's over. — Hunter S. Thompson
Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself. — Harlan Ellison
As a writer, it's disheartening to write books that you pour your soul into and not have them distributed widely enough to find their audience. — Sylvia Day
English Writing Quotes
Good English, well spoken and well written will open more doors than a college degree... Bad English will slam doors you don't even know exist. — William Raspberry
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. — Mark Twain
All the youth now in England of free men, who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it, be set to learn as long as they are not fit for any other occupation, until they are able to read English writing well. — Alfred the Great
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. — Ernest Hemingway
I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou speak at school last year was one of the best moments Stanford, at least, intellectually, had to offer. — Fred Savage
We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it. — P. D. James
Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of "somedays." Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all, it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English. — Glen Cook
I cannot write in English, because of the treacherous spelling. When I am reading, I only hear it and am unable to remember what the written word looks like. — Albert Einstein
You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book, she would never have believed that. So you can never say never. — Tony Dungy
Writing Words Quotes
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. — Victor Hugo
Words are the most powerful thing in the universe... Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind. — Charles Capps
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. — James A. Michener
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. — Aldous Huxley
Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes. — Cole Porter
I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired. — Lucille Clifton
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. — Jack Kerouac
I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise. — Richard Brautigan
When you write a song, most of the words you use are in black and white, and then, from time to time, you use one that’s in color. These words in color are a part of ourselves, because we give them a meaning. If you like, we give them a third dimension. — Jacques Brel
You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length. — Carl Friedrich Gauss
Tomatoes that can sit in the pantry slowly ripening for months without rotting. Plants that can better weather climate change. Mosquitoes that are unable to transmit malaria. Ultra-muscular dogs that make fearsome partners for police and soldiers. Cows that no longer grow horns. These organisms might sound far-fetched, but in fact, they already exist, thanks to gene editing. And they're only the beginning. As I write this, the world around us is being revolutionized by CRISPR, whether we're ready for it or not. — Jennifer Doudna
I used to be an editor and I was editing young adult series. I didn't really like the books that I was reading, so I decided that I would write a book about something I'd want to read if I was 16. It turned into a Cinderella story... I developed a proposal and the characters of 'Gossip Girl' for my job. — Cecily von Ziegesar
One of the things I've been talking about with my critical writing and my own work is that these movies are seen differently in a theatrical space. It's very important to me. I edit films to be seen theatrically, like fiction material I've worked on like Listen Up Phillip or other documentaries. — Robert Greene
I'm close to my audience. I think I have more tools in my box than other guys who might try it. Also, I know how to do this stuff. I know how to write and shoot and edit. I'm technically adept and that helped with the website. You need a big skill set. — Louis C. K.
Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation. — Donald Barthelme
When you catch an adjective, kill it. — Mark Twain
If you make a film, that magic is not there, because you were there while shooting it. After writing a film and shooting it and being in the editing room every day, you can never see it clearly. I think other people's perception of your film is more valid than your own, because they have that ability to see it for the first time. — Jim Jarmusch
My devils and angels, fears and hopes, insights and stupidities, loves and loathings, are what they are. I don't edit them out so much as try to make them interesting - whether I am talking to you, or writing a poem, or joking with my kids, or speaking on television. — Robert Pinsky
I was talking to Shonda Rhimes the other day and I said, "I. Do. Not. Know. How. You. Do. This." While we're writing episode 10, episode 6 is shooting, episode 3 is in the edit, and episode 2 is in its color session...You've got seven episodes in different parts! It's a wild, wild, wild ride, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was badass and amazing. — Ava DuVernay
With these Funny or Die videos, I do everything for them. I write them, act in them, and co-direct them with my buddy Brian McGinn, who I grew up with. We also edit them together. We're working on a small scale of Internet videos, but we're slowly trying to make them become a bigger thing. — Dave Franco
In live-action, writing, production and editing happen in discrete stages. In animation, they overlap - happening simultaneously. This allows a real dialogue to occur between the writer, the director, the actors and the editor, and it makes the writing process a lot more collaborative and a lot less lonely. — Michael Arndt
I came to a dead stop and began major revisions. Sometimes these entailed the shredding of all existing manuscript for a fresh start - an inefficient way to write a book, though I found it exciting. — William Manchester
The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer. And the joy of writing, when you're writing from your subconscious, is beautiful - it's thrilling. When you're editing, which is your conscious mind, it's like torture. — Steve Martin
A writer should be of as great probity and honesty as a priest of God. He is either honest or not, as a woman is either chaste or not, and after one piece of dishonest writing he is never the same again. — Sayings
Read, read read. Read everything. — William Faulkner
With the enormous and steady increase in the volume of our literature, we must rely more and more upon sympathetic selection, judicious editing, and the indexer who knows where to exercise discretion. Any simpleton can write a book, but it requires high skill to make an index. — Rossiter Johnson
For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me. — A. A. Milne
I love meeting 'the Odd Man Out' - like fans of 'Baywatch' who regret, as I do, that Tower 12 Productions didn't put nearly as much energy into writing and directing the show as they put into photographing and editing it. — Nicole Eggert
I write constantly, so it flows from one project to the next, and I would edit everything endlessly if I had the chance. I can always see ways to improve what I've done. At the same time, knowing it's all an ongoing life's work allows me to be less precious about blind alleys, failed experiments, and misfires. — Grant Morrison
Even my novels offer passages in which the major character is imagined as a writer. In Joss and Gold, Li An is a business writer who edits her company's weekly public relations magazine. And in Sister Swing, Suyin writes human interest stories for a free, local community paper, The Asian Time. — Shirley Geok-lin Lim
They put me in an office with the TV set up and said "Here's the tape. When you're finished writing your copy for the little trailer you're going to do, you'll come out and show it to us and we set you up to go edit it." I turned it on and it was just this hardcore film and I was like, "Oh my God, I've fallen down the rabbit hole." — Julie Davis
If you're into writing and making people laugh, or just want to video blog something, you should get a simple digital video camera. And all computers now come with an easy video editing software program. Just mess around with that for a little bit, try to figure it out, then just put stuff online and have fun. Never give up! — Lucas Cruikshank
Writing in journalism teaches you to be very comfortable taking criticism, being edited, and rewriting. — Neil Drumming
I can write for weeks or months sometimes and edit it down to a song. I feel like it's a piece of music that will hopefully stand the test of time and hopefully capture a moment in history if I'm doing it correctly and honestly. — Macklemore
And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. — Sayings
Well, Toronto, I consider to be the birthplace of my films. I've made three films and this is the third one to premiere here in the same theater on the same day at the same time - they are my audience. They're the people that I think about while I'm writing, directing, and editing. I specifically make movies for them. — Jason Reitman
I have the exact opposite problem of every writer I've ever met: Every writer I've ever met writes things that are too long, and they have to edit them down. — Fran Lebowitz
A good edit process turns rocks into diamonds, and every author should love that part as much as the creative phase. I do love it. It's a different side to writing. It's like the fine-tuning. — Kim Smith
Our analytical faculties allow us to look critically at our writing and interpret it. Sometimes we make bold, impulsive edits to our poems, but most forms of precision and economy in poetry, it seems to me, are signatures of the analytical mind. — James Arthur
Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style? and avoid How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece? — James Thurber
Mayakovsky has an essay called How to Write Poems where he says that a poet must spend time and effort choosing the uniquely appropriate words, force them into the rhythm of the poem and then test it out loud ten times or more. Vertov did something very similar at the editing table. A hundred tests, a thousand different variants, endless numbers of try-outs--for meaning, for imagery, for rhythm--and finally, after long intensive efforts, that feeling of joy: it works. . . — Elizaveta Svilova
I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it. — Chuck Klosterman
In Conclusion
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