Editors Quotes - Page 35

• Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Writing, Simple

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.389, Penguin

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• I think being an editor really helped me take other people's notes on my writing. I'd get a note like 'It's too wet' or 'The first couple chapters are good, but then the rest of the pages were so wet that they were completely illegible' or 'Did you dip this in Sprite? This smells like Sprite. Why would you dip your novel in Sprite?' And instead of pushing back, I'd listen. That's an incredibly important skill for a young writer to have.

  Toni Morrison

  Couple, Writing, Thinking

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• The information highway is being sold to us as delivering information, but what it's really delivering is data... Unlike data, information has utility, timeliness, accuracy, a pedigree... Editors serve as barometers of quality, and most of an editor's time is spent saying no.

  Clifford Stoll

  Data, Quality, Information

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• If you're very serious about writing it's helpful to find an agent. It's becoming more and more competitive to have your manuscript even looked at by an editor. Many companies don't accept unsolicited manuscripts anymore, so they'll pay more attention to something that comes in through an agent.

  Ann M. Martin

  Writing, Attention, Agents

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• A year after I'd graduated college, I went to a weeklong conference intensive in Boston, and that's when things kicked into high gear. My workshop leader was a Harvard professor and editor. At the end of the week we met one-on-one over breakfast, and she said, in essence, "Look, you're ready to turn pro." She gave me a list of literary agents to query once I had something to show them. I came home and wrote my first real novel, and the agent that sold it to Tor Books was on that list.

  Brian Hodge

  Real, Book, Home

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• Prominent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians, men of an infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance,that he acted "on the principle of revenge." They do not know the man. They must enlarge themselves to conceive of him.... They have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle, and not a politician or an Indian; of a man who did not wait till he was personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Religious, Revenge, Ignorance

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.47, David M Gross

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• I think it's important to have an experienced writer or editor critique your work to get it ready to pitch an agent.

  Tom Robinson

  Thinking, Important, Agents

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• Nation editor Katrina van den Heuvel told me that the failure to adequately cover the Downing Street Memo epitomizes the timidity, the cowardice of a media that has been manipulated, intimidated, bullied by an administration that has taken it to a high level. . lapdog news media.

  Frank Rich

  Taken, Media, Downing Street

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• Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. It is the dishonest businessman's substitute for conscience. It is the communicator's substitute, whether he is advertising man or editor or writer, for self-respect.

  Russell Lynes

  Teaching, Learning, Men

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• Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They
  cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can
  only represent what is unusual.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Giving, Safe, Life Is

  "The Ball and the Cross". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1909.

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• There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

  Ray Bradbury

  Running, Buddhist, Book

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “Fahrenheit 451: A Novel”, p.209, Simon and Schuster

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• The way I work is that I never let people do an assembly. I don't like it because it shapes the film in a way that I can't really control. To me, editing is making the film and it's a huge process and editors are under-rated.

  Julie Delpy

  Editing, People, Shapes

  "Julie Delpy Talks 2 DAYS IN NEW YORK, Casting Chris Rock, Her Writing Process, Her Comedic Influences and Future Projects". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. August 10, 2012.

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• Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

  John W. Campbell

  Home, Writing And Reading, Closets

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• When an editor works with an author, she cannot help seeing into the medicine cabinet of his soul. All the terrible emotions, the desire for vindications, the paranoia, and the projection are bottled in there, along with all the excesses of envy, desire for revenge, all the hypochondriacal responses, rituals, defenses, and the twin obsessions with sex and money. It other words, the stuff of great books.

  Betsy Lerner

  Sex, Revenge, Book

  Betsy Lerner (2016). “The Forest for the Trees: An editor's advice to writers”, p.61, Pan Macmillan

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• Get an agent. Seriously, submitting stuff unagented means it will end up on the slush pile. An agent is the first quality filter, and a good agent is worth his or her weight in gold, as they'll often know the editors on a personal level and will be able to talk to them directly about the project.

  Tim Lebbon

  Writing, Mean, Quality

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• Don't be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts.

  Gene Fowler

  Art, Writing, Rejection

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• When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.

  Zadie Smith

  Religious, Writing, Scripts

  "This is how it feels to me" by Zadie Smith, www.theguardian.com. October 13, 2001.

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• The most famous self-made man in the world today is our own Edison. Talk with Mr. Edison and he will tell you he owes much if not most of his success to omnivorous reading. Forbes is one of his favorite publications. How closely he reads it can be gathered from a letter just received from him in which he asks the editor to forward a long analytical letter to the writer of a series of articles which contained two figures Mr. Edison questions, and he wants to know exactly on what authority or investigation they were based. Both letters were the product of Mr. Edison and were signed by him.

  B. C. Forbes

  Reading, Science, Men

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• I got a rejection letter from an editor at HarperCollins, who included a report from his professional reader. This report shredded my first-born novel, laughed at my phrasing, twirled my lacy pretensions around and gobbed into the seething mosh pit of my stolen clichés. As I read the report, the world became very quiet and stopped rotating. What poisoned me was the fact that the report's criticisms were all absolutely true. The sound of my landlady digging in the garden got the world moving again. I slipped the letter into the trash... knowing I'd remember every word.

  David Mitchell

  Moving, Writing, Garden

  "Once upon a life" by David Mitchell, www.theguardian.com. May 8, 2010.

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• There's never any humongous next draft. I know a writer who every time he finished a novel - you would know his name very well - but his editor would come and live with him for a month. And they would go through the manuscript together.

  Dean Koontz

  Names, Together, Months

  "The Rumpus Interview With Dean Koontz". Interview with Ben Pfeiffer, therumpus.net. December 21, 2015.

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• With the possible exception of God during the writing of the Bible, every writer in history has needed an editor. So do you.

  Donald Davis

  Funny, Writing, Journalism

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• The first thing that editor does is they take out a red pen, or nowadays you go online, and they start striking things. Basically eliminating things, the biggest task of an editor is to simplify, simplify, simplify and that usually means omitting things.

  Keith Rabois

  Mean, Red, Firsts

  "How To Start A Startup". Y Combinator’s CS183B Stanford Class. Lecture 14: How to Operate,

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• They (fashion editors) have always been our secret weapon.

  Anna Wintour

  Fashion, Secret, Weapons

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• I'd been assured, at age 21 or so, by a well-known editor who saw the first part of The Secret History in what was basically its final form, that it would never be published because "no woman has ever written a successful novel from a male point of view."

  Donna Tartt

  Successful, Views, Secret

  "Donna Tartt and Michael Pietsch". Interview with Michael Pietsch, www.slate.com. October 11, 2013.

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• I wanted an agent who would actually sell stuff. After two British agents failed comprehensively, I was reading Locus (the SF field's trade journal) and noticed a press release about an experienced editor leaving her job to join an agent in setting up a new agency. And I went "aha!" - because what you need is an agent who knows the industry but who doesn't have a huge list of famous clients whose needs will inevitably be put ahead of you. So I emailed her, and ... well, 11 years later I am the client listed at the top of her masthead!

  Charles Stross

  Jobs, Reading, Two

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 2, 2012.

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