Editors Quotes - Page 9

• When you send off a short story, it sits on the editor's desk in the same pile with stories by the most famous and honored names in present-day writing-and it's not going to be accepted unless it's as good as theirs. (And it'll probably have to be better.)

  Daniel Quinn

  Writing, Names, Stories

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• No man has an appreciation so various that his judgment is good upon all varieties of literary work.

  Mark Twain

  Appreciation, Men, Literature

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.219, Courier Corporation

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• Fear your admirers! Learn in time to hear, understand, and love the cruel truth about yourselves!

  Constantin Stanislavski

  And Love, Admirer, Critics

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• Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes.

  John O'Hara

  Sex, Book, Writing

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• The job of the critic is to report to us his moods.

  Oscar Wilde

  Jobs, Mood, Critics

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• The difference between critics and audiences is that one is a group of humans and one is not.

  Edward Albee

  Differences, Groups, Critics

  "Edward Albee, Planned Wilderness: Interview, Essays, and Bibliography". Book edited by Patricia De La Fuente, 1980.

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• I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.

  Anton Chekhov

  Reading, Years, Drunk

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• You need a good editor because every writer thinks he can write a War and Peace, but by the time he gets it on paper, it's not War and Peace anymore; it's comic-book stuff. Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

  Samuel Johnson

  War, Book, Writing

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• I have students that I tell, "If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around." The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Book, Writing, Agents

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

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• Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Remember, Sometimes

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.67, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• When I had to say something that I didn't like to Turkey, but of which I was sure, I said it, with the consequences that you all know [Editor's note: a reference to his comments on the Armenian Genocide]. I said these words ... I was sure

  Pope Francis

  Turkeys, Genocide, Said

  "Full text of Pope Francis' in-flight presser from Poland". www.catholicnewsagency.com. July 31, 2016.

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• The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.

  Anthony Trollope

  Writing, Habit, Critics

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels (Unabridged): The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds...”, p.117, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• When I look at what I'm doing today, I see [the] roots in my college life. I was the online editor of my college paper and an active member of the Harvard Computer Society. I abandoned a summer internship at the Washington Post due to injury and instead did theatre. I found my comedic voice through satirical newsletters in college.

  Baratunde Thurston

  Summer, College, Voice

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• Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around the camp-fire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or wooly-rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him.

  E. M. Forster

  Men, Skulls, Fire

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• If you are doing a peer review of somebody's paper before publication, the editor would not allow you to speculate about the person's motives, about their place in the hierarchy. It's not scientifically relevant.

  Susan Fiske

  Peers, Paper, Peer Review

  "We talked to the scientist at the center of a brutal firestorm in the field of psychology". Interview with Rafi Letzter, www.businessinsider.com. September 26, 2016.

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• I was in the second year of my PhD when I first had the idea - I'd recently started working as a translator, which meant firstly that I was hearing about amazing-sounding books from other translators, and also that I was getting enough of an insider's view of the publishing industry to be aware of all the implicit biases that made it so difficult for these books to ever get published, especially if they weren't from European languages (harder to discover, editors can't read the original, lack of funding programmes, authors who don't speak English).

  Deborah Smith

  Book, Years, Speak English

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I've heard a lot of editors and agents say, "If the book is good, it will get published." I totally disagree with that.

  Micah Perks

  Book, Agents, Heard

  "Nice girls are not supposed to be hungry". The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. September 28, 2016.

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• Never buy an editor or publisher a lunch or a drink until he has bought an article, story or book from you. This rule is absolute and may be broken only at your peril.

  John Creasey

  Book, Lunch, Broken

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• A reckoning is coming on the state of the internet journalism, because right now, the way it's set up, there is so much room for libel to squeak through that you're going to see...they're going to rewrite the rule book on journalism very soon. They have to, because the bloggers are getting away with so much rumor-mongering about public officials and even private figures because they don't have editors and they don't have fact checkers and they don't have lawyers. There is going to be a price to pay somewhere down the line.

  Rod Lurie

  Book, Rumor, Lines

  Interview with Will Harris, www.bullz-eye.com. March 2, 2009.

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• Politicians, bureaucrats, editors, new commentators, 'economists' teachers,' and other word artists who denounce private enterprise and praise socialism are their own worst enemies...these attackers are unwittingly destroying the sources of their own livelihood. They kill the geese that lay the golden eggs - and don't know it!

  Leonard Read

  Teacher, Artist, Eggs

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• As editor of WikiLeaks, I am very proud of three things. Number one, we have never got it wrong in terms of what we say. A document is what it is. Number two, we have never revealed one of our sources ever. Number three, what are we proud of? We are proud that there is not a single instance of anyone coming into physical harm as a result of our publication.

  Julian Assange

  Two, Numbers, Wikileaks

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• I believe that all brands will become storytellers, editors and publishers, all stores will become magazines, and all media companies will become stores. There will be too many of all of them. The strongest ones, the ones who offer the best customer experience, will survive.

  Natalie Massenet

  Believe, Media, Magazines

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• I was able to come up with a couple articles for the magazine, I was able to solicit help from a bunch of my friends to contribute pieces: Patton Oswalt, Seth Green, Emo Phillips, Chris Hardwick, John Hodgman, and more. It's very much a "Weird Al" themed issue, so I'd like to think that there's a lot of "Weird Al" flavor throughout but I think it'd be generous really to call me an editor.

  Al Yankovic

  Emo, Couple, Thinking

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.

  Marianne Moore

  Editing, Unfair, Hard

  Interview in Writers at Work, Second Series, 1963.

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• Editors are extremely fallible people, all of them. Don't put too much trust in them.

  Maxwell Perkins

  People, Too Much, Critics

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