As we all saw in grade school, once you learn how to read a book, somebody is going to want to write one - that's how authors are made. Once we know how to read our own genetic code, someone is going to want to rewrite that 'text,' tinker with traits - play God, some would say.

Gregory Benford

Basically, we used to have a rule at 'Saturday Night Live' that you're not allowed to bring up 'The Simpsons' at the rewrite table, because 'The Simpsons' has done every joke there is. Every week there would be guys going, 'The Simpsons did that.' I go, 'C'mon.' And 'South Park,' too.

Adam McKay

You Write Would

I don't really revise. I tend to rewrite.

Akhil Sharma

Write Tend Ten

We've always dreamt of a TV series and working in film. When we first sat down to seriously write 'A Little Nightmare Music,' to write something for TV was our original inspiration. But all the stuff we were writing down is not going to work on stage. We had to rewrite it so it would work on the stage.

Aleksey Igudesman

Work Music Age

Financial news services and other media organizations get press releases 15 minutes before they are distributed to the general public, fueling a furious competition among the news services to rewrite them for their subscribers during their window of exclusivity.

Alex Berenson

Pet Write Window

I rise at 6. Strong coffee helps me face the paper edition of 'The New York Times.' It daily challenges my own capacity for faking anything deranged enough to sound true. I work till 2 P.M. unless I am in the throes of finishing something. I rewrite to be reread.

Allan Gurganus

Work Time York

I'm not patient at all. I avoid writer's block by writing. I power through with a bad version, so I can move on, and usually once I've gotten to the next scene, I'll discover what was missing from the bad version scene. Then I can easily rewrite it to get back on the right path.

Anders Holm

Power Writing Writer

I did a complete rewrite of 650 pages in two weeks.

Anne Perry

Age Write Weeks

I've been shocked by film actors - 25 and under - having such confidence and cockiness to rewrite a scene. My background is more about the director being in control. It's all about yielding. It's an oddly submissive relationship in which you're moulded, Pygmalion-style.

Anne-Marie Duff

Relationship You Yield

It is easier to rewrite anything - even the worst writing in the world - than it is to write something from scratch.

Antony Johnston

Writing Write Worst

If I wanted to make a quick buck, there's far easier ways of doing it. What I want is to provoke people. If you want a hit song, all you need to do is rewrite an old song. It might have been proven to work, but you won't be remembered the same way.

Avicii

Work You Write

Filming 'The Drew,' thinking a lot about story arcs and all that stuff, I thought about how my career ended. I decided I wanted to try to rewrite that.

Baron Davis

Car Write Wanted

Not only must we fight to end disastrous unfettered free trade agreements with China, Mexico, and other low wage countries, we must fight to fundamentally rewrite our trade agreements so that American products, not jobs, are our number one export.

Bernie Sanders

Men Age Write

It's the prerogative of the writer to rewrite the world into one he would like to exist.

Birgitte Hjort Sorensen

Writer Write Would

The hardest part about writing any song is, what do you write? And how do I rewrite things? You start to run out of ideas that feel fresh.

Brad Paisley

Art You Writing

No matter what, the way to learn to program is to write code and rewrite it and see it used and rewrite again. Reading other people's code is invaluable as well.

Brian Kernighan

Write Well Way

The implication is that this basic idea we have that we are controlled by our genes is false. It's an idea that turns us into victims. I'm saying we are the creators of our situation. The genes are merely the blueprints. We are the contractors, and we can adjust those blueprints. And we can even rewrite them.

Bruce Lipton

Yin Write Victims

I feel like I have been able to rewrite my story to some extent. But I feel like there is a lot of work to be done.

Chad Kelly

Work Write Tory

When I started 'Still Missing,' I had a few key plot points in mind, which I played around with mentally for a couple of months, then one day I just started writing. Not having an outline led to some cool plot twists, but also many rewrites! A lot of the plotting happened on subsequent drafts.

Chevy Stevens

Men Cool Art

When I first started writing 'Still Missing,' I didn't actually realize I was writing a thriller. I thought it was more women's fiction, but during the many years of rewrites, I kept taking out the boring parts, and then my agent informed me that I had written a thriller.

Chevy Stevens

Women Men Art

Quite often, I'll be sent a script for a movie. And I find that I like it, so I say I'll do it. But then they rewrite it for me. They make it quirky. Odd. I find that rather annoying. I call it Walkenising.

Christopher Walken

Yin Write Walk

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

My only writing ritual is to shave my head bald between writing the first and second drafts of a book. If I can throw away all my hair, then I have the freedom to trash any part of the book on the next rewrite.

Chuck Palahniuk

The problem is once you've written the opening paragraph and worked out how the rest of the story will go in your head, there's nothing in it for you. I write in longhand using disposable fountain pens on the right-hand side of the notebook for the first draft, then I rewrite some of the sentences and paragraphs on the left-hand side.

Colm Toibin

For Cantonese - because there's no standardized pinyin system - I have to have someone read it to me, and then I rewrite the whole script in my own Cantonese pinyin.

Daniel Wu

In my office I have a sign that says, 'Don't think. Just write!' and that's how I work. I try not to worry about each word, or even each sentence or paragraph. For me, stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times.

David A. Adler

Everything I write goes through a lot of drafts. A hundred rewrites is not unusual for me to go through - the last fifty maybe just going back and forth on a single line or word selection.

David Berman

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren't as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

David Byrne

I did three or four weeks of work on 'Godzilla;' it wasn't a page-one rewrite or anything like that. The term is 'script doctoring,' is what I did on it.

David S. Goyer

There are always people screeching and upset that I did this or didn't do that. Basically, they're upset that I didn't rewrite an earlier book they particularly liked.

Diana Gabaldon

To me, the screenplay only becomes the Bible of the film after the actors have been cast. You go over the initial script with them and listen to the way they talk. Then you try to do a rewrite to accommodate them.

Dito Montiel

I write my novels in English first; then they are translated into Turkish by professional translators. Then I take their translation and rewrite. So basically, I write the same novel twice.

Elif Safak

Oh, I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite. Although sometimes there are sections, sometimes you're just lucky and a paragraph will just kind of come out. And that's great. But that's not ordinary in a day's work.

Elizabeth Strout

I really - I don't take my work that seriously, and I think that's what keeps me loose. If I try to write, if I catch myself trying to write, I'll fall right on my face. I'll see it. If I see in the prose that I'm - 'Boy, look at me writing,' I rewrite it. I rewrite it because I don't, because I think it's distracting.

Elmore Leonard

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.

Ernest Hemingway

I wanted to rewrite the code of life, to make new molecular machines that would solve human problems.

Frances Arnold

I don't do rewrites. I put all the pages in a pile next to the typewriter.

Francine Pascal

I've rewritten a lot of the scripts I've done. 'Little Shop Of Horrors' was a complete rewrite, but I didn't touch the dialogue. Essentially, I'm a very good editor.

Frank Oz

There is something about the live performance of an orchestra that makes it very different to a film. With a film, you can rewrite it in a way with the material you have, and in rehearsals, you're really trying out different things. In an orchestra, you can't do that. They separate as soon as the performance factor comes into play.

Gael Garcia Bernal

I hate to repeat lines, to say the same damned thing. I try to rewrite cliches and make what I say sound fresh.

Gary McCord

I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.

Gay Talese

You don't want to become guilty of plagiarism by letting someone else's words get inadvertently mixed in with your own. If you do feel the need to paste in a block of research while you're writing, be sure to highlight the copied text in a different color so you can go back and remove or rewrite it entirely later.

Gayle Lynds

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

George W. Bush

Yes, I did some rewrites of the show as some of the stuff was not very good and I worked my butt off to make it something that the audience liked and that I could be proud of.

Gil Gerard

I don't feel a need to prove anything or rewrite my legacy.

Grayson Allen

As we all saw in grade school, once you learn how to read a book, somebody is going to want to write one - that's how authors are made. Once we know how to read our own genetic code, someone is going to want to rewrite that 'text,' tinker with traits - play God, some would say.

Gregory Benford

I'm sharpest early, and though I can rewrite any time, day or night, I'm useless after noon when it comes to writing first draft.

Hallie Ephron

Let me back up a little and tell you why I prefer writing to real life: You can rewrite. A novel, for example, can be cleaned up, altered, trimmed, improved. Life, on the other hand, is one big messy rough draft.

Harlan Coben

Life may not always fall into neat chapters, and you may not always get the satisfying ending you're looking for, but sometimes a good explanation is all the rewrite you need.

Harlan Coben

As soon as I started writing, other writers stopped wanting me acting in their shows - maybe they thought I was going to rewrite them.

Harvey Fierstein

I remember that I used to get lots of books from the library, and 'Little Women' was one of them. And I used to just cross out the parts of it that really upset me because it's such a sad book in so many ways. I'd cross out the parts that upset me, and I would rewrite new endings.

Helen Oyeyemi