“I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”
“It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence—no first draft. I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”
Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)
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Dorothy Parker 172
American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist 1893–1967Related quotes
“I begin with writing the first
sentence—and trusting to Almighty
God for the second.”
Source: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”
Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 2
Context: I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."
Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 2, Simplicity, p. 12.
Source: Magids Series, The Merlin Conspiracy (2003), p. 7.
First lines of the novel.