writing quote

[Cadam]

Is that saying "All writing is rewriting" attributable to someone (who?) or is it just a common saying? I need to post this above my ds's desk and wanted to give credit where credit is due.

[Amy in Orlando]

“First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about.”
-Bernard Malamud

“There is no great writing, only great rewriting.”
-Louis Brandeis

“Books aren’t written - they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.”
-Michael Crichton

If found these quotes. I don't think it's a novel idea and I don't think you need to give credit unless you want a long list of credits.

[Hen Jen]

this might be close, "We can say nothing but what hath been said. Our poets steal from Homer....Our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best." -Robert Burton

not exactly, but I thought of this, "A circle of quiet' by Madeleine L'Engle...

"My husband is my most ruthless critic...Sometimes he will say, 'It's been said better before.' Of course. It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die." pg. 28

and this

Certainly much of what I was fumblingly trying to say..was obvious. But the obvious needs to be said. Sometimes the obvious is so obscured by brilliant analysis that it gets lost...But the obvious need not be shallow. Sometimes it is profound and painful, and can be written off only by being called obvious."pg.39

found this too,

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment. -Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)

"Every man is a borrower and a mimic; life is theatrical and literature a quotation." -Ralph Waldo Emerson