All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!
T. E. Lawrence, 1888-1935
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville, 1819-1891
A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1904-1991