Anne Lamott Quotes

Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.

There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.

A face in the picture would bother me, so I'd rub it out with the turpentine and do it over.

When it comes to lyrics, I just write down a lot of things, and only a very tiny fraction of it, I think, is any good.

To be honest, I rewrote 'Wicked Nights' a number of times. I just wasn't happy with the end result.

People might be surprised to know how much I throw away. For every page I publish, I throw 10 pages away.

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

I think too many people edit themselves way too soon. There's plenty of time to edit, and it is a crucial part of it all, too.

I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.

On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.

Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate, in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

The best part of all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over I rewrite a lot, over and over again, so that it looks like I never did.

A book is never finished; it's abandoned.

No book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.

I might write four lines or I might write twenty. I subtract and I add until I really hit something I want to do. You don't always whittle down, sometimes you whittle up.

I aim to be content with what I produce. It's an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

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.

Writers need to be tough. This is not for the weak of will. And we have to realize that, yeah, it's never good enough. It's not like fixing a car where it's precise and we know what the end result will be definitively.

I used to play works in progress to people, but now I wait 'til it's finished, because you make excuses all the time: 'Well, there's gonna be an orchestra on it.' Rather than make excuses, wait 'til it's finished, and then they can say they don't like it.

You become a great writer by writing.

I tend to write and record things quite quickly. You can tamper with things for years, and it's artistic laziness sometimes.

I write a chapter, then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. I don't think we mine creativity from within. It's bestowed from on high, from God.

I came up with a story and I wrote it.