Authors:
  • When the New Yorker turned down work, they turned it down in such an elaborately gentlemanly way making apologies for their own shortsightedness. Undoubtedly it was their fault but somehow for some reason this fell short of the remarkably high standard that you by your own work have set for yourself. They had a way of rejecting my work that made me feel sorry for them somehow.

    "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.