Draft Quotes

I don't feel like there should have been three backs taken ahead of me. And I'll always feel that way. But there's only one draft, and I can't change it. All I can do is go out and prove myself. ~ Clinton Portis

It's not just the NFL. Every other league has a draft. It has been fundamental to the success of professional sports. ~ Roger Goodell

I'm the only one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that has Final Draft on my computer. Then you show up and go to any coffee shop in L.A., and there are a hundred people your age with Final Draft. ~ Bill Hader

Salem"

In salem seasick spindrift drifts or skips
to the canvas flapping on the seaward panes
until the knitting sailor stabs at ships
nosing like sheep of Morpheus through his brain's
asylum. Seaman, seaman, how the draft
lashes the oily slick about your head,
beating up whitecaps! Seaman, Charon's raft
dumps its damned goods into the harbor-bed,--
There sewage sickens the rebellious seas.
Remember, seaman, Salem fisherman
Once hung their nimble fleets on the Great Banks.
Where was it that New England bred the men
who quartered the Leviathan's fat flanks
and fought the British Lion to his knees? ~ Robert Lowell

...life is like an essay. Each day is a new draft- identify the strengths and build on them; identify the weaknesses and make them strengths. Then your life will get better and better. ~ Arthur Costa

I do a nice sloppy first draft like everybody else. And then just work at it and work at it and groom it. I get input from other people. ~ Diablo Cody

I don't write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn't work, or what simply is not alive. ~ Susan Sontag

I'll play a character who is getting married to a woman to avoid the draft. Ultimately they fall in love with each other, but at first it's only out of practicality. ~ Elijah Wood

Because I wanted you." He turned from the window to face me. "More than I ever wanted anything in my life," he added softly.

I continued staring at him, dumbstruck. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't this. Seeing my openmouthed expression, he continued lightly. "When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I'd have no doubt. And I didn't. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself, 'Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weighs as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman'"

I started toward him, and he backed away, talking rapidly. "I said to myself, 'She's mended ye twice in as many hours, me lad; life amongst the MacKenzies being what it is, it might be as well to wed a woman as can stanch a wound and set broken bones.' And I said to myself, 'Jamie, lad, if her touch feels so bonny on your collarbone, imagine what it might feel like lower down...'"

He dodged around a chair. "Of course, I thought it might ha' just been the effects of spending four months in a monastery, without benefit of female companionship, but then that ride through the dark together"--he paused to sigh theatrically, neatly evading my grab at his sleeve--"with that lovely broad arse wedged between my thighs"--he ducked a blow aimed at his left ear and sidestepped, getting a low table betw ~ Diana Gabaldon

In the 2013 Economists Program, we hired 51 percent women, 49 percent men. And the reason for that is that we have a draft from all over the world, and we've hired, for instance, in that group, a good number of Chinese economists - highly qualified, all Ph.D.s from the best universities of the world. And guess what? They're all women. ~ Christine Lagarde

Getting that first draft out is a horribly hard grind, but that (perversely) is where the joy of it lies. ~ Jonathan Stroud

I calculated that if I wrote five pages a day, which seemed very doable, I would have an 1,800-page first draft when the deadline rolled around. Though completely unwritten, I was very impressed with how long my first draft would be. ~ Michael Showalter

Once I've got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which will be polishing drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I'll check my research. ~ Colleen McCullough

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters. ~ Margaret Atwood

But then, of course, there are always unanswered questions. Those questions lead to more questions, with the circularity of the endless inquest, keeping people like me in business. We can and should always poke at the questions of motivation. And we will. There never is a final draft of history. ~ Bob Woodward

Unfortunately, most news writing is the product of a first draft culture. ~ Michael Gartner

She had streaked blonde hair, long and straight, parted in the middle framing high cheek bones, an aquiline nose and beautiful deep blue eyes. She was young, around 30, tall and lithe with a good body, athletic, not skinny. She wore a sleeveless black dress that exposed her toned arms and shoulders, indicating regular workouts or yoga. There was a hint of vein running the length of her lean muscle. This girl stood out like an arabian in a corral full of draft horses. ~ Nick Hahn

For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce.
... how to set yourself spinning? ~ Annie Dillard

Journalism is the first rough draft of history ~ Donald E. Graham

The first rough draft of history. ~ Ben Bradlee

To me the only real star of the movie is the writer. And I work with writers very closely, from outline to first draft and on to the seventh draft, whatever it takes. Then my job is to support the director to make the best movie we can. Some producers try to go past them, but my job is to support them. ~ Dino De Laurentiis

On movies, I like to involve the cast in the writing of the script. I like to have a rehearsal period, after which I do the last draft, which gives me a chance to incorporate anything the actors have come up with during the rehearsal period, so I'm very inclusive as a writer. ~ John Cleese

In early draft it never satisfied me, and that was when it clicked into place and it went so well as a diary. ~ Colleen McCullough

It was nearly impossible to keep anything a secret, especially from her
sisters, the youngest of whom - Hyacinth - could probably have won the war against Napoleon in half
the time if His Majesty had only thought to draft her into the espionage service. ~ Julia Quinn

Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians. ~ Marie Colvin

Early in his writing career Michael Lincoln expected he would look up from his word processor, out through his window and be able to take in the flat calm of the Pacific Ocean, or the choppy Atlantic. The North Sea, even, maybe the Thames river. Some body of water, surely. He glanced up from the first draft of his third crime novel and beheld the magnificent vista of Garrand's Scrap Yard in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside. ~ GB Hope

'Rent' was a special project for me. It was my first notable screenplay job. I worked with two wonderful directors on it, starting with Spike Lee in the summer of 2001. I wrote a draft for Spike and he was really good to me. ~ Stephen Chbosky

Serpentining means trying to control a situation, backing out of it, pretending it's not happening, or maybe even pretending that you don't care. We use it to dodge conflict, discomfort, possible confrontation, the potential for shame or hurt, and/or criticism (self- or other-inflicted). Serpentining can lead to hiding out, pretending, avoidance, procrastination, rationalizing, blaming, and lying.
I have a tendency to want to serpentine when I feel vulnerable. If I have to make a difficult call, I'll try to script both sides of it. I'll convince myself that I should wait, I'll draft an e-mail while telling myself that it's better in writing, and I'll think of a million other things to do. I'll emotionally run back and forth until I'm exhausted. ~ Brene Brown

4. Or else:
Rough draft of a letter

I think of you, often
sometimes I go back into a cafe, I ist near the door, I order a coffee
I arrange my packet of cigarettes, a box of matches, a writing pad, my felt-pen on the fake marble table
I Spend a long time stirring my cup of coffee with the teasspoon
(yet I don't put any sugar in my coffee, I drink it allowing the sugar to melt in my mouth, like the people of North, like the Russians and Poles when they drink tea)
I pretend to be precoccupied, to be reflecting, as if I had a decision to make
At the top and to the right of the sheet of paaper, I inscribe the date, sometimes the place, sometimes the time, I pretend to be writing a letter

I write slowly, very slowly, as slowly as I can, I trace, I draw each letter, each accent, I check the punctuation marks

I stare attentively at a small notice, the price-list for ice-creams, at a piece of ironwork, a blind, the hexagonal yellow ashtray (in actual fact, it's an equilaterial triangle, in the cutoff corners of which semi-circular dents have been made where cigarettes can be rested)

(...)

Outside there's a bit of sunlight
the cafe is nearly empty
two renovatior's men are having a rum at the bar, the owner is dozing behind his till, the waitress is cleaning the coffee machine

I am thinking of you
you are walking in your street, it's wintertime, you've turned up your foxf ~ Georges Perec

First, you scribble. Then, you write. ~ Timi Waters

Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work The print and a proper one is the only completed photograph, whether it is specifically shaded for reproduction, or for a museum wall. ~ W. Eugene Smith

If they make the deadline because the Shiites and Kurds essentially rammed a draft through over Sunni Arab objections, there will be hell to pay. ~ Wayne White

A universal draft is most often the instrument of Third World dictators. ~ Joe Bob Briggs

The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant or distracting, and tightens up what is left. Lazy poets never carry their early drafts far enough: some even believe that virtue lies in the original doodle scrawled on the back of an envelope. ~ Robert Graves

Yes, the first draft is the key. That's why I put so much energy, focus, and attention on the first draft, because I respect that first go at the story. If I don't have the key in that first draft, I invariably won't get it in subsequent drafts, though I can craft around it. ~ Caridad Svich

I remember draft night, I shook David Stern's hand while rocking a red suit with white pinstripes and red gators I've always been a trendsetter. ~ Jalen Rose

A draft doesn't produce the people we need to satisfy our real manpower shortage. We need specialists to keep our jets flying. ~ Patricia Schroeder

Your first draft is not a gold nugget. It might be a nugget, but it's not golden. ~ Ethan Nahté

Then it happened. One night as the rain beat on the slanted kitchen roof a great spirit slipped forever into my life. I held his book in my hands and trembled as he spoke to me of man and the world, of love and wisdom, pain and guilt, and I knew I would never be the same. His name was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. He knew more of fathers and sons than any man in the world, and of brothers and sisters, priests and rogues, guilt and innocence. Dostoyevsky changed me. The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler. He turned me inside out. I found I could breathe, could see invisible horizons. The hatred for my father melted. I loved my father, poor, suffering, haunted wretch. I loved my mother too, and all my family. It was time to become a man, to leave San Elmo and go out into the world. I wanted to think and feel like Dostoyevsky. I wanted to write.
The week before I left town the draft board summoned me to Sacramento for my physical. I was glad to go. Someone other than myself could make my decisions. The army turned me down. I had asthma. Inflammation of the bronchial tubes.
"That's nothing. I've always had it."
"See your doctor."
I got the needed information from a medical book at the public library. Was asthma fatal? It could be. And so be it. Dostoyevsky had epilepsy, I had asthma. To write well a man must have a fatal ailment. It was the only way to deal with the presence of death. ~ John Fante

I find getting the first draft down to be the biggest challenge. Every word, every punctuation mark, every plot point is a decision. It's much more fun to play with something that already exists. ~ Cynthia Leitich Smith

The one person who didn't seem enthusiastic about giving a speech in Berlin was Obama. When Favreau and I talked to him about it, he didn't offer much beyond suggesting we use Berlin's story to talk about what we were proposing in our own foreign policy. Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected a request from the campaign for the speech to take place at the Brandenburg Gate, where Reagan had called on Gorbachev to tear down the wall, saying that the venue should be reserved for an actual president. When he learned about this, Obama was embarrassed and annoyed. "I never said I wanted to give a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate," he snapped. It spoke to a larger dynamic in the campaign: While Obama was often blamed for the cult of personality growing up around him - arty posters, celebrity anthems, and lavish settings for his events - he was rarely responsible for it, and worried that we were raising expectations too high in a world that has a way of resisting change.

"Before he left for Afghanistan, he read a draft of the speech and told us he was satisfied with it - "You could put this speech on the teleprompter and I'd be fine," he said - but I was hoping for more than that. I was hoping for edits that would elevate the speech and make it more than a summation of our worldview. The shift to a foreign audience hadn't been hard, as Obama's message about working across races "and religions, his preference for diplomacy over war, his embrace of the science of climate c ~ Ben Rhodes

Back in my pulp-mag days, I worked from about 8:30 to noon, took an hour off for lunch, and worked again from one to three, for a work day of five and a half hours or so. I wrote 20 to 30 pages of copy in that time, doing it all first draft, so that I was able to produce a short story of 5,000-7,500 words in a single day. ~ Robert Silverberg

The men who wrote the First Amendment religion clause did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that amendment ... the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress. It can hardly be thought that in the same week the members of the first Congress voted to appoint and pay a chaplain for each House and also voted to approve the draft of the First Amendment ... (that) they intended to forbid what they had just declared acceptable. ~ Warren E. Burger

My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression - thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential. ~ Noam Chomsky

Whoever produced the first draft would need, in all fairness, to put in some of what the other side wanted alongside his own demands. His statement of the other side's wishes then became an irreducible minimum, while all of his own demands were still up for negotiation. So the drafter always started at a disadvantage. Greg vowed to remember never to write the first draft. ~ Ken Follett

I have to do draft after draft ... It takes me a long time, but I love doing it, and I have to do it every day, or I feel slack. ~ Donald Hall

Her voice froze on the second word, like a feather taking off in a sudden draft. Then it cooed and hovered and soared and eddied and the silent invitation of a smile picked delicately at the corners of her lips, very slowly, like a child trying to pick up a snowflake. ~ Raymond Chandler

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever. ~ John Updike

IF YOU ABOLISH THE DRAFT," said Owen Meany, "MOST AMERICANS WILL SIMPLY STOP CARING WHAT WE'RE DOING IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD ~ John Irving

I am a technophile, so there is no such thing as a first draft. The first draft plunges on, and about a quarter of the way through it I realise I'm doing things wrong, so I start rewriting it. What you call the first draft becomes rather like a caterpillar; it is progressing fairly slowly, but there is movement up and down its whole length, the whole story is being changed. I call this draft zero, telling myself how the story is supposed to go. ~ Terry Pratchett

My thoughts keep vacillating between the draft that feels more like a gust in this sizes-too-big hospital gown, and Dr. Milligan's proposal that I'll live to be a 175 years old. This is getting a little weird, even under the circumstances. I'm hundreds of miles from home, half naked in a room with two guys I barely know. Taken out of context, I'd have to question my common sense. Heck, even in context. ~ Anna Banks

I realized what tremendous teamwork it took to pull this off. I originally had nine and a half pages. This is the condensed version. So, anyone I may have inadvertently omitted in this draft, please email me and I'll send you the longer edition. (Trust me. Your name is definitely on that one. As is the name of every resident in the entire state of Wisconsin.) ~ Marilyn Brant

January 8 has been a lucky day for me. I have started all my books on that day, and all of them have been well received by the readers. I write eight to ten hours a day until I have a first draft, then I can relax a little. I am very disciplined. I write in silence and solitude. I light a candle to call inspiration and the muses, and I surround myself with pictures of the people I love, dead and alive. ~ Isabel Allende

Writing a novel is like pottery. Your initial draft of your story is like a lump of clay. Editing is like shaping that piece of clay into something interesting and beautiful. ~ Monika Pardon

We have written a draft of the script in every calendar year since [2010]. Quite honestly. Our Deadpool file is ... full, to capacity. ~ Paul Wernick

I don't fiddle or edit or change while I'm going through that first draft. ~ Nora Roberts

The growl that permeated the room was loud enough to rattle the mirror on the wall next to Qhuinn's head - as well as the silver brush set on the bureau and the crystals on the sconces by the door. At first he was sure it was Phury…except then the Brother's brows came down hard and the male looked over his shoulder.

Layla was out of bed and closing in on the pair of them - and holy fucking shit, the look in her eyes was enough to melt paint off a car door: In spite of the fact that she was not well, her fangs were bared, and her fingers were curled into claws…and the icy draft that preceded her made the back of Qhuinn's neck prickle in warning.

That growl was nothing that should have come out of a male…much less a delicate female of Chosen status.

And if anything, her nasty tone of voice was worse: "Let. Him. Go."

She was looking up at Phury as if she were fully prepared to rip the Brother's arms out of their sockets and beat him with the stumps if he didn't do exactly what she said. Pronto ~ J.R. Ward

When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I'd have no doubt. And I didn't. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself 'Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weights as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman. ~ Diana Gabaldon

The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them. ~ John Irving

You see that honky McNamara on television? He says, "Yes, we are going to draft thirty percent of the Negroes in the Army. This is where they can have equal opportunity. Yeah. Yes ... it's true that they are only ten percent of the population, but this is a better chance for them." When that honky talk about drafting thirty percent black people, he's talking about black urban removal - nothing else. ~ Stokely Carmichael

What your opponent wants you to think is useful data in figuring out what they think. So get the early draft, okay? ~ James S.A. Corey

I've realized that with each novel I seem to set out a kind of puzzle for myself. And I am never sure in the process of writing a first draft how it's all going to turn out. ~ Laurie Foos

A dream is like a first draft.
No one will ever see it but you. ~ T.N. Suarez

Don't stop with your first draft. ~ P. J. Plauger

Affirmative action is a little like the professional football draft. The NFL awards its No. 1 draft choices to the lowest-ranked team in the league. It doesn't do this out of compassion or guilt. It's done for mutual survival. They understand that a league can only be as strong as its weakest team. ~ J. C. Watts

Journalism is the first draft of history ~ Phil Graham

If somebody asked for the first draft of something I'd written, it'd probably be pretty close to whatever got published. I get enjoyment out of writing, but I get absolutely no enjoyment out of rewriting, so I don't do much of it. The more you work on something, certainly, the better it gets. But there's also a pretty clear law of diminishing returns. ~ Chuck Klosterman

After graduating early from high school, I carefully listened to the quarterback during my first play in college spring ball. My mind was on the very basics of football: alignment, assignment, and where to stand in the huddle.

The quarterback broke the huddle and I ran to the line, meeting the confident eyes of a defensive end - 6-foot-6, 260- pound Matt Shaughnessy.

I was seventeen, a true freshman, and he was a 23-year-old fifth-year senior, a third-round draft pick. Huge difference between the two of us. Impressing the coach was not on my mind. Survival was. "Oh, Jesus," I said. I wasn't cursing. I was praying for help.

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray ( James 5:13).

That day Matt came off the ball so fast. Bam! Next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, thrown to the ground. I got up and limped back to the huddle.

Four years later...standing on the sidelines in my first NFL game, bouncing on my toes, waiting for my chance to go in, one of the tight ends went down. My time to shine! Where do I stand? Who do I have? I look up and meet the same eyes I met on my first play in college football.
Matt Shaughnessy! ... ~ Jake Byrne

The following year, after I had prepared my draft, the Conference of the Interparliamentary Union at The Hague decided to set up a special commission to study the problem seriously. ~ Ludwig Quidde

I feel very protective in the first draft, when all the pieces are coming together. I work in a way that is not linear or chronological at all, even with the short story. I will just be writing bits and pieces, and then when I have all the pieces on the table, that for me is when it feels like the real work begins. ~ Jill McCorkle

Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it."
"Are you saying we shouldn't hope?"
"I'm saying we should remove the carrot and walk forward with our eyes open! ~ Margaret Weis

The writing of the script is a continual process. There's the first draft and then many, many re-writes here and there. ~ Abdellatif Kechiche

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do
then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night. In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster. It is never as bad as you think, it is never as good. It is somewhere in between, and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it approaches more closely. But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft. An artist must believe in himself. Your belief is contagious. Others may say he is vain, but they are affected. ~ Tennessee Williams

No one uses a ribbon typewriter any more, but your final draft is not the time to try to wring a few more sheets out of your inkjet cartridge. ~ Lynn Abbey

So, the process of revision, it's not systematic. But for me, I mean, I know a lot of poets who write out a draft and then revise it and I think they're happier people. But, I'm just not able to do it that way. I need to just continually examine it as I do it. ~ Edward Hirsch

A 3K word story might well be done in some caffeine-and-nicotine-fuelled 36 hour session, and at the end of it, there'll be a few passes of editing required, but I basically have a polished draft. ~ Hal Duncan

Draft resisters have had and should continue to have only normal difficulties immigrating [to Canada]. Probably any young American can get in if he is really determined, though all will need adequate information ... The toughest problem a draft resister faces is not how to immigrate but whether he really wants to. And only you can answer that. For yourself. That's what Nuremberg was all about. ~ Mark Satin

With no draft, the only people who went to war were those who wanted to, or at least those who wanted to join the military. ~ Tim O'Brien

We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee, we don't take trips on LSD. We don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street, we like living right and free. ~ Merle Haggard

I have worked out with the Thunder, Lakers, Knicks, Grizzlies, Spurs, and a few others before the draft. I have worked out primarily against shorter and supposedly faster players in these workouts. ~ Jeremy Lin

Well, I worked in a sheet metal factory once and scarred my wrist from the cuts. I found a sympathetic psychiatrist who told the draft board I was insane. We used the scars as proof of a suicide attempt. ~ Tom Verlaine

I cried most days working on the first draft. The last scenes were the hardest. I had a feeling where I wanted to end - the exact note - but I couldn't see how to get there. Sarah Murphy, my editor, asked the right questions to help me. I think of 'The Bear' as a hopeful book. ~ Claire Cameron

You are here to step into the shoes of UN ambassadors - to draft resolutions, to plot strategy, to negotiate with your allies as well as your adversaries. Your goal may be to resolve a conflict, to cope with a natural disaster or to bring nations together on an issue like climate change. You may be playing a role, but you are also preparing for life. You are acting as global citizens. ~ Ban Ki-moon

At first my father's job was clearing ruins. He had filed a sharp protest, however, justifying his disability over ten pages of closely spaced handwriting, buttressed by statements from witnesses and discharge papers from clinics for nervous diseases. His arguments were irrefutable, particularly if we take into consideration--aside from the actual facts--his polemical tone and his brilliant style. 'I hereby state for the attention of the esteemed Commissarist,' he wrote in his appeal, 'in connection with Item A-2, in which I took the liberty of citing the causes of my total incapacity and proving--if in a very sensible fashion--my abnormality as well as my complete mental and physical worthlessness, the worthlessness of a neurotic and alcoholic incapable of taking care of his family or himself, I hereby state, therefore, with a view to the most specific information possible on this matter, although each and every one of the aforementioned matters is in itself a physical amputation, I am stating that I am also flat-footed, a certificate to which effect I am appending from the draft board at Zalaegerszeg, by which I am exempt from military service by virtue of 100 percent flat-footedness. . . ~ Danilo Kis

Listen you..you.."he sputtered.
"You what ? You've already used hellion,draft girl and missy' .i can think of several more degradation,but then again im not the one trying so hard to be intimidating."
"How about you,maddending,foolish,moronic little chit ?"
"Much better !" she applauded. ~ Kate Noble

I normally keep a series of draft in a catalogue type of book in which I scribble, sketch and draw ideas. ~ Jonathan Shapiro

Presidential Democratic front-runner Howard Dean admitted to Chris Matthews on the 'Hardball' show that he got out of the draft because of a bad back. He had a curvature of the spine. Apparently it curved too far to the left. ~ Jay Leno

People do not care to give alms without some security for their money; and a wooden leg or a withered arm is a sort of draft upon heaven for those who choose to have their money placed to account there. ~ Henry MacKenzie

Even in forgetting there is an aspect of recollection, a faded few moments of wispy consciousness clung like webs in high-vaulted chambers, moving ever so lightly with the draft. ~ Jeffrey Panzer

The first draft you're pretty much on your own, so I love that. I can let my imagination go wild. I just go crazy. Then, over the years - it takes years to write these things, to make these things come to pass - there are many, many, many drafts. For Maleficent, there were at least 15. ~ Linda Woolverton

In my first draft every sentence I put down is to advance the story. Each subsequent draft - the 3rd, the 7th, the 27th - is trying to turn each of those sentences into a poem. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I'm against the draft. I believe we should have a professional military; it might be smaller, but it would be more effective. ~ Jesse Ventura

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft. ~ Alain De Botton

I begin. I write a draft without ever looking back. Without ever touching what's gone before. Because I think it will be shit, so I daren't look back. I write a draft. I start again. I have the text when I start the second draft and then I do the same thing a third time.
- To Linda L. Richards, The January Interview ~ Clive Barker

Mexican writer and diplomat, "Pasado en claro" ("A Draft of Shadows") You learn something the day you die. You learn how to die. ~ Katherine Anne Porter

Read your work aloud, if you can, if you aren't too embarrassed by the sound of your voice ringing out when you are alone in a room. Chances are that the sentence you can hardly pronounce without stumbling is a sentence that needs to be reworked to make it smoother and more fluent. A poet once told me that he was reading a draft of a new poem aloud to himself when a thief broke into his Manhattan loft. Instantly surmising that he had entered the dwelling of a madman, the thief turned and ran without taking anything, and without harming the poet. So it maybe that reading your work aloud will not only improve its quality but save your life in the process. ~ Francine Prose

The world was in a confused turmoil-wars, H-bombs, confrontations, fear, hate, hate. And Hollywood was feeding the confusion with a steady diet of sex, violence, and lewdness. What wisdom needed, to catch up with our runaway technology, was time. And time might be bought not with violence, but with compassion-that divine unguent that lubricates and soothes our abrasive human hates. Compassion might just possibly slow down the ticking till we could defuse the world with reason.
And we had an outside chance of buying a little precious extra time by filming the life of Schnozzola, the great compassionate clown. A chance that got lost among stars and their satellites. Pity Pity.
Now what would I do? Certainly the world didn't need more films about sex, violence, and lewdness. Judging by contemporary Hollywood films, the United States was made up of sexpots, homosexuals, lesbians, Marquis de Sades, junkies too! too! beautiful people, country-club liberals, draft-card burners, and theatrical and religious figures bleeding make-believe blood for cause and camera. "Shock films," they called them; "skin flicks" that dealt not with the humorous, honest, robust, Rabelaisian earthiness that nurtures life, but with the cologned, pretentious, effete, adulterated crud that pollutes life. ~ Frank Capra

Some writers find that they don't know their themes until they've finished the first draft (I am one). They then rewrite with an eye toward balancing on that tightrope: not too contrived, not too rambling; does what I'm saying about the world below me actually add up to anything? Other writers pay attention to these things as they write the first draft. Either way, an awareness of the macro and micro levels of theme can provide one more tool for thinking about what you should write, and how. ~ Nancy Kress

When I was writing my first draft, and feeling grandiose, I e-mailed an artist/clothing designer I know and suggested we collaborate on a fashion line inspired by the outfits my characters wore. I regret that we never did that. ~ Heidi Julavits

Once you start rewriting, you're not able to stop. With each draft the fundamental banality and worthlessness of the material becomes more evident even as its vitality and spontaneity are drained from it. ~ Barry N. Malzberg