Editor Quotes

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
― T.S. Eliot

“The first draft reveals the art; revision reveals the artist.”
― Michael Lee

“The thing you don't realize, my dear girl, is that I have been forced by the economic realities to start taking publishing very seriously. For example, it has been brought to my attention that our ability to continue to pay the hordes of people employed by M&S (God knows how many mouths have to be fed) depends directly on the number of copies of your new book [Life Before Man] that we are able to sell between September and Christmas. In past I have been able to treat this whole thing as a fun game. I have never been troubled by the cavalier explanations about lost manuscripts and fuck-ups of various sorts. Now I have learned that this is a deadly serious game. I don't laugh at jokes about the Canadian postal service. I cry. (in a letter to author Margaret Atwood, dated February, 1979)”
― Jack McClelland, Imagining Canadian Literature: The Selected Letters

“A poor grasp of dead reckoning may have led Christopher Columbus to North America instead of India, a navigational error of about eight thousand miles.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“The editor-writer relationship should not be thought of as adversarial.”
― Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction

“A good editor is someone who cares a little less about the author's needs than the reader's”
― Dene October

“It ain't the picture and it ain't the camera - it's the operator.”
― Jordan Hoechlinchlin

“A magazine—a relevant one—should be a sound, not an echo.”
― Tina Brown, The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983-1992

“To maintain momentum, you must rejoice in risk.”
― Tina Brown, The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983-1992

“A good journalist must be neutral,” were the first word she heard from her professor at Georgetown.
“No journalist is, nor will be, nor really should be neutral,” were the first word spoken to her by editor-in-chief of the Des Moines Registrant. “We’re all biased one way or the other and that’s fine. It’s like in the court of law, two points of view clashing so the truth can emerge. Being objective is not the same as being neutral.”
― Krzysztof Pacyński, A perfect Patricide: Part 1

“A book that is made up of only great sentences is not necessarily a great book.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“If you tell me that I have to write the story of my life, I would be very quick to tell you that God has already written it. What I have to do is to quit playing editor.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Beauty is in the eye of the photoshop editor.”
― Nitya Prakash

“To ride the zeitgeist successfully, you have to know when it has turned.”
― Tina Brown, The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983-1992

“Every other author may aspire to praise... the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.”
― Eley Williams, The Liar's Dictionary

“I'm not the author of your fate, just the editor.”
― Greg Brisendine, Calvin in Quarantine

“Opinions, opinions, opinions abound - I do believe that this, here, opinion is sound.”
― A.K. Kuykendall

“Become a motivator of writing, not the butcher of it; similarly, become an editor, not the copy editor.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“Editing a written text is a collaborative enterprise that commences with the other parties commenting up the author’s initial ideas and it can include technical assistance in correction of grammatical mistakes, misspellings, poorly structured sentences, vague or inconsistent statements, and correcting errors in citations. Editing is as much as an art form as writing a creative piece of literature. A good editor is a trusted person whom instructs the writer to speak plainly and unabashedly informs the writer when they write absolute gibberish. Perhaps the most successful relationship between a writer and an editor is the storied relationship shared by Thomas Wolfe and his renowned editor, Maxwell Perkins. By all accounts, the prodigiously talented and mercurial Wolfe was hypersensitive to criticism. Perkins provided Wolfe with constant reassurance and substantially trimmed the text of his books. Before Perkins commenced line editing and proofreading Wolfe’s bestselling autobiography Look Homeward, Angel,’ the original manuscript exceeded 1,100 pages. In a letter to Maxwell Perkins, Thomas Wolfe declared that his goal when writing “Look Homeward, Angel,” was “to loot my life clean, if possible of every memory which a buried life and the thousand faces of forgotten time could awaken and to weave it into a … densely woven web.” After looting my own dormant memories by delving into the amorphous events that caused me to lose faith in the world and assembling the largely formless mulch into a narrative manuscript of dubious length, I understand why a writer wishes to thank many people for their assistance, advice, and support in publishing a book.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“No ghost editor edited shit up on my work.”
― Jordan Hoechlin

“He thought it was great and would make a terrific story - Adventure Writer Embroiled in Real Adventure! As she recalled all the bruises, cuts and bullet wounds on her previous travels, Vic wondered what he considered a real adventure.”
― Jerry Gill, Vic: Bloody Reprisal

“I believe the poem and the poet are one. All of us are a part of this universe, and there is a universe within us. So as individuals, we are poetic universes swinging in a rhythm, carving our paths like musical notes...”
― Fouqia Wajid, Aatish 2

“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.’” In this single sentence we have the power to destroy our entire world by simply changing out one name and replacing it with our own. And I wonder how much destruction we need to experience before we quit playing editor?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Should an unpublished writer spend money for an editor? I did my own due diligence and searched for ones that edited many books in my genre (found one through my writers group), and paid each one handsomely. It was well worth it. Got me traditionally published, each time.”
― Nzondi, Oware Mosaic

“Återstod problemet att skaffa en ny redaktör. Enligt bolagets nya program skulle han äga följande kvalifikationer: han skulle först åtnjuta odelat förtroende som medborgare, tillhöra ämbetsmannakåren, äga en titel, usurperad eller förvärvad, som vid behov kunde påbättras; han skulle dessutom äga ett respektabelt utseende, så att han kunde visas vid fester och andra offentliga nöjen; han skulle vara osjälvständig, liten smula dum, emedan bolaget visste att den sanna dumheten alltid åtföljes av konservatism i tänkesätt och därjämte av en viss grad bakslughet, som känner förmäns önskningar i luften och som aldrig glömmer, att allmänt väl är enskilt, rätteligen förstått nämligen; han skulle tillika vara halvgammal, emedan man lättare skulle kunna styra honom, och gift, emedan bolaget, som bestod av affärsmän, sett att gifta drängar uppför sig bättre än ogifta.”
― August Strindberg, Röda Rummet

“Apakah tulisan pria ada artinya kalau tidak dibaca siapa pun? Apakah kata kata memiliki arti kalau tidak pernah didengarkan?”
― Julia Quinn, Romancing Mister Bridgerton

“Semua orang perlu diedit”
― Julia Quinn, Romancing Mister Bridgerton

“I have Just discovered that creating a recipe is like writing, the art is knowing when to stop adding and changing the ingredients. - Chris Geiger”
― Chris Geiger

“You can tell more about a writer by listening to him than by reading something he wrote.”
― Maxwell Perkins

“Confieso que no puede menos de causarme mucha admiracion que obras de esta naturaleza, buscadas por los sabios de la nacion, apetecidas de todo curioso, elogiadas, traducidas y publicadas diferentes veces por los estrangeros, enemigos jurados de las glorias de España, lleguen á escasearse, y escasearse en unos tiempos en que vemos repetidas y multiplicadas ediciones de otras que es imposible sean de tanto interes para nuestra nacion, ni tan acreedoras á la inmortalidad”
― EDITORIAL