"Best now, better later"
About this Quote
A three-word slogan that refuses to soothe: "Best now, better later" reads like a writer's mantra stripped to bone. Heroux sets up a neat paradox - "best" is supposed to be the peak, a final verdict. Then comes "better", a quiet act of sabotage that keeps the future from being an afterthought. The line works because it denies perfection without surrendering standards. It insists on excellence in the present tense while admitting that the present will be revised, outgrown, or surpassed.
The intent feels practical, almost editorial. Make the strongest choice you can today - sentence, decision, draft, relationship - but don't romanticize that choice as permanent. The subtext is anti-complacency disguised as encouragement: if you treat "best" as a stopping point, you become yesterday's masterpiece. Heroux bakes in a permission slip for iteration, which is a deeply writerly form of courage: you can commit without claiming omniscience.
Contextually, coming from a 20th-century writer, it echoes the century's accelerating churn: modernism's break with tradition, mid-century reinvention, postwar technologies compressing time, tastes, and attention. It also nods to the labor conditions of writing itself - deadlines, drafts, publication as a snapshot rather than a monument. "Best now" is what you can deliver under real constraints; "better later" is the discipline to return, rethink, and refuse stagnation. Not optimism, exactly - more like a controlled restlessness.
The intent feels practical, almost editorial. Make the strongest choice you can today - sentence, decision, draft, relationship - but don't romanticize that choice as permanent. The subtext is anti-complacency disguised as encouragement: if you treat "best" as a stopping point, you become yesterday's masterpiece. Heroux bakes in a permission slip for iteration, which is a deeply writerly form of courage: you can commit without claiming omniscience.
Contextually, coming from a 20th-century writer, it echoes the century's accelerating churn: modernism's break with tradition, mid-century reinvention, postwar technologies compressing time, tastes, and attention. It also nods to the labor conditions of writing itself - deadlines, drafts, publication as a snapshot rather than a monument. "Best now" is what you can deliver under real constraints; "better later" is the discipline to return, rethink, and refuse stagnation. Not optimism, exactly - more like a controlled restlessness.
Quote Details
| Topic | Optimism |
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