“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

“Life is like a typographical error: we're constantly writing and rewriting things over each other.”

“I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.”

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

“Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite”

“Mostly, you write a script and someone’s gonna rewrite you. They get hundreds of— not hundred but they get ten writers to write something. If you have a big budget, you can go and get a lot of people to write on script…. I just actually heard that somebody said, 'Well, your screenplay got bought and now someone like Carrie Fisher will come in and rewrite you.' And I feel terrible, you know, because that’s not what I mean to do. My idea was never to raid something and trash it, you know. ‘Cause that – that’s more work for me!”

“When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.”

“Very broadly, I think one writes and rewrites the same book. I lead a character from book to book, I continue along with the same ideas. Only the angle of vision, the method, the lighting, change.”

“It has been said, "History is written by the victors." I take this to mean we can make ourselves victorious by writing, and then rewriting our own stories. In a country and culture so dominated by media, by the manipulation of words and stories, telling the tales of people whose stories historically have not been told is a radical act and I believe an act that can change the world and help rewrite history.”

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”