kill one's darlings

present singular third person kills one's darlings · participle present killing one's darlings · participle past killed one's darlings · past killed one's darlings · alternative murder one's darlings

1. idiomaticTo destroy things or characters, particularly in art, of which one is fond, often reluctantly in order to improve one's artistic output.

   Someone asked William Faulkner what the supreme law of art was, and he replied in three words: "Kill your darlings!"

   1965, Raymond Léopold Bruckerger, The History of Jesus Christ, page 161

   3 more examples

   [Fans] won’t participate in online dialogues and events, visit message boards and chat rooms or design games. As a result, platforms for supplementary advertising aren’t built, starving even the shows fans profess to love […]. Aloof and passive fans kill their darlings.

   2008 January 20, Virginia Heffernan, “Art in the Age of Franchising”, in New York Times

   In sharp contrast to choreographers who try to build a repertory that reflects an ongoing personal style, Koresh prefers to "kill his darlings," as he puts it, and start from scratch.

   2011 January 30, Theodore Bale, “Choreographer Koresh debuts Sense of Human”, in Houston Chronicle

   As the curators sifted through more than 100 years of artworks, disagreements inevitably arose. “We all had to kill our darlings,” says Foster.

   2015 March 28, Ted Loos, “The Whitney Museum’s New Home”, in Wall Street Journal