kill one's darlings

• murder one's darlings

From a reported remark by William Faulkner (1897-1962), advising prospective authors that they must kill their "darlings", i.e. suppress overuse of their favorite expressions, tropes, characters, etc.

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kill one's darlings

1. (idiomatic) To destroy, especially with conflicted motives, things or persons of which one is fond.
   • 1965, Raymond Léopold Bruckerger, The History of Jesus Christ, page 161:

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

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

     [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.

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

     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.

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

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