One of the things that’s most fun about doing book talks is hearing all the aphorisms people share with me before, during, and after the talks. After a recent talk, Vincent Straub, a university student, handed me an envelope that contained a selection of his aphorisms, which are sharp, funny, and have the philosophical twist we spent some time discussing during the talk. Here are a few of his sayings…

Those who do not want to live together will die together.

In today’s world, nothing is as present as absence.

Our best political friendships are with those with whom we share the same level of confusion.

Heaven is a dance floor with bookshelves.

In an email exchange with Vincent, I suggested he might want to revise some of his aphorisms after writing them. As someone who typically practices the ‘spontaneous combustion’ method of aphorism composition, I need to hear this advice myself. It might seem strange to revise a composition that’s already so short, maybe a dozen words at most. But revision is part of the writing process for works of every length; it’s not an optional afterthought or something you do when you’re ‘finished.’ For example, the ironic effect of Vincent’s

It is a marvel to grow up and watch how your parents develop

could be heightened by changing up the word choice:

It is a marvel to grow up and watch your parents mature.

The word ‘mature’ has richer connotations in this context and enhances the reversal of a child watching parents mature when usually it's the other way around. Similarly, further refining already refined sentences like

Those who stay sitting will never feel their shackles

can make them even more pointed and powerful:

You never feel your shackles if you never stand up.

Distilling ‘stay sitting’ into ‘stand up’ adds crucial allusions to ‘standing up for yourself’ while the addition of the second person form of direct address makes the whole more definitive.

I had the chance to see the rewards of revision in my own work after rediscovering some aphorisms I had written while living in San Francisco. I noted that an early version of one saying read

I’d rather be a voice in the desert than a face in the crowd

but I revised it to

Better a voice in the desert than a face in the crowd

which is much stronger since it removes the first person reference, making the observation more outward-directed, and it changed the sentence from a preference to a directive, which prompted the composition of an aphorism about writing, which spontaneously combusted and I did not revise:

Revision is precision.