Editors Quotes - Page 27

• Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.

  Jean Cocteau

  Criticism, Theatre, Acting

  "If your identity is inscribed for you from the outside, it’s even more difficult to escape". Interview with Stephanie LaCava, logger.believermag.com. July 1, 2014.

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• If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture.

  Ray Bradbury

  Teacher, School, Cake

  Ray Bradbury (1990). “Fahrenheit 451: Curriculum Unit”

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• Once your acting job is over, you just hope they have a good editor and they put together a good film.

  Virginia Madsen

  Jobs, Over You, Acting

  Source: www.iamrogue.com

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• Don't market yourself. Editors and readers don't know what they want until they see it. Scratch what itches. Write what you need to write, feed the hunger for meaning in your life. Play at the serious questions of life and death.

  Donald Murray

  Writing, Play, Life And Death

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• The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib.

  Robert Burchfield

  Communication, Monsters, Language

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• The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.

  Mark Twain

  Eggs, Bugs, Should

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.53, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Book, Reading, Boys

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades”, p.165, Simon and Schuster

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• Never throw up on an editor.

  Ellen Datlow

  Writing

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• What I eventually realized is that the real business of books is not done by awards committees or people who turn trees into paper or editors or agents or even writers. We're all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers.

  John Green

  Real, Book, Writing

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• Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new.

  William Zinsser

  Country, Writing, Thinking

  William Zinsser (2012). “On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, p.24, Harper Collins

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• That's what I try to do as a writer and as the editor of HuffPost: cover important stories in an obsessive way that enables them to break through the din of our multimedia universe.

  Arianna Huffington

  Break Through, Important, Trying

  "Arianna Huffington: Measuring Success Based on a Third Metric". Interview with Gina Murdock, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• Editors seek out the first novels with the seductiveness of Don Juans; the pleasure of discovery is one of the obvious reasons.

  William Targ

  Writing, Discovery, Juan

  William Targ (1975). “Indecent pleasures: the life and colorful times of William Targ”

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• It's the first time in the history of the world that creatives are also distributors. And that's very profound if you think that up until the recent history, permission was required for us to be able to share work at any sort of scale. We had to get permission from galleries, from ad agencies or photo editors to be able to have our work out there. And now anybody with access to a computer can show their work in 200 countries around the world.

  Chase Jarvis

  Country, Photography, Thinking

  Interview with Chris Maher and Larry Berman, bermangraphics.com. 2011.

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• I don't like a kind of workshop that is about editing--I don't want to sit there and be an editor. I don't want to tell someone how to "fix" a poem.

  Natasha Trethewey

  Editing, Want, Kind

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• I was just reviewed by Robert Gottlieb, who was my editor at 'The New Yorker,' and he sort of wondered at the fact that I still need to exorcise my parents at my age. I think he makes a basic mistake in thinking that exorcism can ever be total. The exorcism of your parents will still be occurring on your own deathbed.

  Francine du Plessix Gray

  Mistake, Thinking, Parent

  "Conversation: Francine du Plessix Gray and Sean Wilsey". Interview with Boris Kachka, nymag.com. May 30, 2005.

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• I always think, if I were an editor, and I was invited to a show, and I would have to wait for 45 minutes in the dark or in the cold or in the heat, maybe I would like to have a fresh drink or a piece of chocolate.

  Alber Elbaz

  Dark, Thinking, Waiting

  "Celebrations for Elbaz... and plenty self-doubt". Interview with Miles Socha, www.shanghaidaily.com. March 30, 2012.

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• What editors are obliged to appear to say that men want from women is actually what their advertisers want from women.

  Naomi Wolf

  Men, Want, Advertising

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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• For example, instead of being asked to write an article, suddenly editors wanted me to make super-short videos. The assumptions of those video gigs was that kids don't read as much news and basically need to be read to, which I found really problematic and kind of insulting. I thought, Isn't it just that you don't have any money and that's why you want me to make some crappy "content" for your website?

  Astra Taylor

  Kids, Writing, Insulting

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I feel like fashion was much more exclusive. There weren't as many parties. There weren't as many social gatherings. It wasn't required that designers have events to lure customers or editors or any of that - it was about a show. If there was a dinner or a party, people would go out after. New York nightlife was about late nights and dancing.

  Roopal Patel

  Fashion, New York, Party

  Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

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• It's incorrect to assume you can be a fashion editor because you blog, if you don't have experience to look at fashion in a professional way.

  Andre Leon Talley

  Fashion, Looks, Way

  "Q&A: André Leon Talley". Interview with Luisa Zargani, wwd.com. February 28, 2013.

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• Vision is an important part of being a good editor, but so is teamwork and grace.

  Clara Jeffery

  Teamwork, Grace, Vision

  Source: www.politico.com

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• John Loengard, the picture editor at Life, always used to tell me, ”If you want something to look interesting, don’t light all of it.

  Joe McNally

  Photography, Light, Want Something

  Joe McNally (2008). “The Moment It Clicks: Photography secrets from one of the world's top shooters”, p.141, Pearson Education

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• I first told the idea to an editor I had met who, after reading one of my novels for adults that was set in a high school, had an idea that I might write something for children.

  Daniel Handler

  Children, Reading, Writing

  "Not My Job: Author Daniel Handler Gets Quizzed On Baggage Handlers". Interview with Peter Sagal, wvasfm.org. January 21, 2017.

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• Most of my success, I feel, comes from being a good editor as opposed to a great writer.

  Tucker Max

  Feels, Great Writers

  "Everything I Learned About Writing I Learned From Tucker Max". Interview with Brandon Mendelson, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 15, 2009.

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• It isn't a question of enhancement through design. Whether an editor realizes it or not, design is part of what he does every time he prints the paper.

  Louis Silverstein

  Design, Doe, Paper

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