kill one's darlings

Alternative forms

• murder one's darlings

Etymology

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.

Verb

kill one's darlings

1. (idiomatic) To destroy, especially with conflicted motives, things or persons of which one is fond.
   • 2008 Jan. 20, Virginia Heffernan, "Art in the Age of Franchising," New York Times (retrieved 16 April 2015):

     [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 Jan. 30, Theodore Bale, "Choreographer Koresh debuts Sense of Human," Houston Chronicle (retrieved 16 April 2015):

     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," Wall Street Journal (retrieved 16 April 2015):

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