Editors Quotes - Page 6

• Writers' bedtimes vary, but few have been spared the shock of a copy editor's early wake-up call.

  Bill Walsh

  Sports, Wake Up, Bedtime

  "Copy Desk: Don Podesta and Bill Walsh". Online discussion, www.washingtonpost.com. February 16, 2005.

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• I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.

  C. S. Forester

  Writing, Thinking, Want

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• So I went out and bought myself a copy of the Writer and Artist Yearbook, bought lots of magazines and got on the phone and talked to editors about ideas for stories. Pretty soon I found myself hired to do interviews and articles and went off and did them.

  Neil Gaiman

  Yearbook, Artist, Phones

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• I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.

  Carl Sandburg

  Years, Two, Rejection

  Carl Sandburg, Margaret Sandburg, George Hendrick (1999). “Ever the Winds of Chance”, p.146, University of Illinois Press

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• Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.

  Alvin Toffler

  Writing, Errors, Letters

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• I've had editors over the years who couldn't find a clue if it was stapled to their butt.

  Len Wein

  Years, Clue, Ifs

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• There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. (…)
  A good novel editor is invisible.

  Terri Windling

  Book, Vision, Trying

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• Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they’re lazy, and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.

  Ben Bradlee

  Thinking, Lazy, Use

  "Watergate: 25 Years Later". Online discussion, www.washingtonpost.com. June 17, 1997.

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• Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Flower, Air, Editing

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.75, Courier Corporation

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• I think one of the interesting things is that vi is really a mode-based editor.

  Bill Joy

  Thinking, Interesting, Interesting Things

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• Refuse to be average.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Inspirational, Average, Excellence

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• That's why editors and publishers will never be obsolete: a reader wants someone with taste and authority to point them in the direction of the good stuff, and to keep the awful stuff away from their door.

  Walter Jon Williams

  Doors, Want, Stuff

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• I think that they had afforded me many opportunities to do good work there, and I think I did. It was a wonderful four years. I really worked with some great people, terrific producers, terrific editors

  Connie Chung

  Opportunity, Thinking, Years

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• You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual. Most of them are mangled and even have made up stuff in them, that is to say, made up stuff by the writer or editor.

  Black Francis

  Musician, Stuff, Interviews

  Interview with Eric Olsen, blogcritics.org. September 9, 2002.

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• Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are willing to read whatever the tide washes up at their feet.

  Lynn Abbey

  Feet, Literature, Tides

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• William Packard surely must be one of the great editors of our time.

  James Dickey

  Our Time

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• If you look at any list of great modern writers such as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, you'll notice two things about them:
  1. They all had editors.
  2. They are all dead.
  Thus we can draw the scientific conclusion that editors are fatal.

  Dave Barry

  Two, Scott Fitzgerald, Looks

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• I got a fortune cookie that said, "To remember is to understand." I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child.

  Anna Quindlen

  Life, Children, Judging

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• I heard a story the other night about an editor who visited the Iowa Workshop and, when asked what sorts of books she published, replied, "Classic books." One of the students asked her, "You mean like Kafka?" Apparently she said, "Oh, I don't think I would publish Kafka."

  Matthew Specktor

  Book, Mean, Night

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Teaching translation is more of an editing job. You act as editor. But you can have fun with it.

  Gregory Rabassa

  Jobs, Fun, Teaching

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.

  Steve Martin

  Writing, Mind, Conscious

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• I think part of my success as an editor came from never worrying about a fact, a cause, an atmosphere. It was me—projecting to the public. That was my job. I think I always had a perfectly clear view of what was possible for the public. Give ‘em what they never knew they wanted.

  Diana Vreeland

  Jobs, Thinking, Views

  Diana Vreeland (1984). “D.V.”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• I was spurred by the fact that having worked for women's magazines myself as a journalist, if you go off and interview a female celebrity, I'd just go in and interview them like I'd interview any human being and talk about the things that interested me. And you'd come back, and you'd file your copy. And then my editor would read through my copy and go, why haven't you asked them if they want kids? And I'd be like, well, I don't know, I interviewed Aerosmith last week. And I didn't ask them that.

  Caitlin Moran

  Kids, Want, Lasts

  "Not A Feminist? Caitlin Moran Asks, Why Not?". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. July 29, 2016.

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• I'm a writer, not an editor, and though the editing rarely cut into my writing time, it did take away from that walking-around-thinking-about-it-when-you're-not-thinking-about-it time that I think is important for writers. When you're half-thinking about what you're working on while driving, cooking . . . just letting things sift and settle, come to you.

  Ben Fountain

  Writing, Cutting, Thinking

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• Being in New York, a lot of people I knew were top-notch copy editors or photo retouchers, so I had a good community around me that knew how to do the specialized stuff.

  Ian Christe

  New York, People, Community

  Source: pitchfork.com

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