Editing Quotes

• Editing is everything. Cut until you can cut no more.

  Esther Freud

  Cutting

  " Ten rules for writing fiction" by Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you're just taking notes

  Chris Abani

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• My life needs editing.

  Mort Sahl

  Funny, Witty, Humorous

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• Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator.

  Vsevolod Pudovkin

  Movie, Directors, Cinema

  "Watch: 5 Master Editing Techniques That Appear in Everything From ‘Psycho’ to ‘Hugo’" by Casey Cipriani, www.indiewire.com. October 9, 2013.

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• When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

  Stephen King

  Kings, Book, Writing

  "Beyond cuts: the many roles of a writer's editor" by Nell Frizzell, www.theguardian.com. March 12, 2014.

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• Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Space, Inspire

  Orson Scott Card (1996). “Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker”, p.33, Macmillan

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• The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Eloquent

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• I'm a big fan of editing and keeping only the interesting bits in.

  Sarah Vowell

  Interesting, Fans, Bigs

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• Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.

  Sydney Pollack

  Writing, Form, Process

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

  T. S. Eliot

  Witty, Humorous, Writing

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• As for my style, for my vision of the cinema, editing is not simply one aspect; it's the aspect.

  Orson Welles

  Style, Vision, Cinema

  "The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema". Book by Jean Mitry, Indiana University Press, p. 176, 1999.

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• The essence of cinema is editing.

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Essence, Cinema

  "Five Oscars as a Producer, Director and Screenwriter". The Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org. April 7, 1939.

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• Be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.

  Henry Watson Fowler

  Writing, Simple, Written Language

  Henry Watson Fowler, Francis George Fowler (1931). “The King's English”, Oxford University Press

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• Performance is made in the editing room, and I've come to see the truth in that - the idea that they say performances are usually made in the editing room because what you film is the raw material. I think just going through the process of saying, "Which take do we use? Why is that the take we want? I want that take can you edit again, I'm not sure that's the one, I think it's this one." And just because you go through that process, I think somehow it's made me sort of more open about the [actor's] possibilities.

  Ralph Fiennes

  Thinking, Ideas, Raw Materials

  "Ralph Fiennes Talks THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, Collaborating with Wes Anderson, If He Will Direct More Shakespeare, and More in Berlin". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. February 10, 2014.

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• There's this kind of incredibly mistaken idea that because it's so much cheaper to roll the camera than it used to be and it's so much easier to accumulate a ton of footage, that then you can just go shoot a ton of footage and the editor will make sense out of it. But if you don't have something deliberate made, you're not gonna save it in the editing room.

  Ethan Hawke

  Editors, Ideas, Cameras

  "Ethan Hawke's fifth elements". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. June 14, 2012.

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• I learned directing by editing because I saw all the mistakes I had made.

  Julie Delpy

  Mistake, Saws, Made

  "Julie Delpy: Male Directors Have Stolen My Ideas". Interview with Emily Zemler, www.elle.com. March 22, 2016.

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• Often you must turn your stylus to erase, if you hope to write anything worth a second reading.

  Horace

  Reading, Writing, Turns

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• Back when the Bible was written, then edited, then rewritten, then rewritten, then re-edited, then translated from dead languages, then re-translated, then edited, then rewritten, then given to kings for them to take their favorite parts, then rewritten, then re-rewritten, then translated again, then given to the pope for him to approve, then rewritten, then edited again, the re-re-re-re-rewritten again...all based on stories that were told orally 30 to 90 years AFTER they happened.. to people who didnt know how to write... so...

  David Cross

  Bible, Kings, Writing

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• A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

  Richard Bach

  Perseverance, Writing, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

  Richard Bach (2012). “A Gift of Wings”, p.9, Dell

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• The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer. And the joy of writing, when you're writing from your subconscious, is beautiful - it's thrilling. When you're editing, which is your conscious mind, it's like torture.

  Steve Martin

  Beautiful, Writing, Editors

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• My goal is to strip things down so that you need just the right amount of words or shape to convey what you need to convey. I like editing. I like it very tight.

  Maya Lin

  Goal, Needs, Shapes

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• Make sure your message is clear, yet that you are faithful to its complexity.

  Michael Dirda

  Writing, Faithful, Messages

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• Every first-rate editor I have ever heard of reads, edits and rewrites every word that goes into his publication.... Good editors are not 'permissive'; they do not let their colleagues do 'their thing'; they make sure that everybody does the 'paper's thing.' A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done.

  Peter Drucker

  Writing, Cutting, Thinking

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• A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a journalist you are expected to know the difference.

  Bill Walsh

  Writing, Differences, Ass

  Bill Walsh (2004). “The Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English”, p.11, McGraw Hill Professional

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• The essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Emotional, Essence, People

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