“I can’t write five words but that I change seven.” – Dorothy Parker

“To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over…” – John Hersey

“Half my life is an act of revision.” – John Irving

“Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.” – Colette

“Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It’s like passing around samples of sputum.” – Vladimir Nabokov