#revision

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing. ↗

— Bernard Malamud

#pleasures #revision #writing

Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#historical #history #hitherto #important #point

It was my dream, and probably the dream of every one of us, to bring about a revision of the Versailles Treaty by peaceful means, which was provided for in that very treaty. ↗

— Hans Frank

#bring #dream #every #means #peaceful

He could have made it right with the book. But he hasn't. He is a revisionist of history. He has lied. ↗

— Monica Lewinsky

#could #hasn #history #lied #made

So for me the approach has become to go into a story not really sure of what I want to say, try to find some little seed crystal of interest, a sentence or an image or an idea, and as much as possible divest myself of any deep ideas about it. And then by this process of revision, mysteriously it starts to accrete meanings as you go. ↗

— George Saunders

#any #approach #become #crystal #deep

Since the election, since the formation of a government, the death in Iraq has increased. The United States stands by, helpless to do anything about it. That's the reality, not George Bush's revisionist history! ↗

— Mark Shields

#anything #bush #death #election #formation

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw. ↗

— William Maxwell

#revision #revisionism #the-past #change

I would rather have one article a day of this sort; and these ten or twenty lines might readily represent a whole day's hard work in the way of concentrated, intense thinking and revision, polish of style, weighing of words. ↗

— Joseph Pulitzer

#concentrated #day #hard #hard work #i

Stories, as much as we like to talk about them, retrospectively, as emanations of theme or worldview or intention, occur primarily as technical objects when they're being written. Or at least they do for me. They're the result of thousands of decisions made at speed during revision. ↗

— George Saunders

#being #decisions #during #intention #least