Top 100 Editor Quotes
#1. Public opinion is the pennant on a nation's mast which shows the politician and the editor how to trim the sails.
Austin O'Malley
#2. Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.
Alvin Toffler
#3. You are the storyteller and the editor of your book of life. So write tales of imagination, tragedy, and adventure and illustrate it with the colors of beauty.
Debasish Mridha
#4. George Jean Nathan, the critic and editor. Nathan, according to the Earthling concept of time, had died back in 1958. According to the Tralfamadorian concept, of course, Nathan was still alive somewhere and always would be.
Kurt Vonnegut
#5. The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.
Ernest Hemingway,
#6. An editor's job is to take something great and make it good.
Kinky Friedman
#7. A male editor I once worked with tried to dissuade me from the personal: "Who care about what happened to you?" The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters.
It does.
Mona Eltahawy
#8. My first teacher was Steven Spielberg. I worked on Amazing Stories. That was my first job, as a writer and as a story editor. Watching him and his command of the tools of filmmaking, and his admiration for writing and the story itself, was the greatest lesson I ever had.
Mick Garris
#9. Never buy an editor or publisher a lunch or a drink until he has bought an article, story or book from you. This rule is absolute and may be broken only at your peril.
John Creasey
#10. The monarchy, as Lord Esher, adviser to Edward VII and editor of Queen Victoria's early letters and journals, would later say, was exchanging 'authority' for 'influence'.3
A. N. Wilson
#11. I think having a coach or an editor or whatever the novelist's producer is could help. If you finish a chapter and you turn it in to him, and he or she said, "That was pretty good, it might go better." Maybe that's what I'll try to find.
Craig Finn
#12. For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains.
Henry David Thoreau
#13. I always read what I write out loud, and I did that long before any radio thing. My editor finds that unusual.
Ricky Jay
#14. I publish my own books, so there isn't a certain editor I owe the book to at a publishing house.
Dave Eggers
#15. that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence. He was the proprietor of the paper and its editor and sub-editor. He was the Foreign Secretary and the Judge.
Virginia Woolf
#16. As good as' always spells mediocrity. But when a writer's work is in competition with all those thousands of other manuscripts that pour over an editor's desk, he cannot afford to be 'as good as'; he (or she) must be 'better than.
Phyllis A. Whitney
#17. For decades, as literary editor, I have followed the growth of our creative writing in English. In my Solidaridad Bookshop, half of my stock consists of Filipino books written in English and in the native languages.
F. Sionil Jose
#18. As a writer, you write the book, you give it to your editor, it's copy edited, it's published, it's thrown out there, and then there's a response.
David Bergen
#19. This is a man who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in three years, editor of the Harvard Law Review, argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court.
Rod Parsley
#20. The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib.
Robert Burchfield
#21. [Writing] books is really fun because your "voice" is pretty undiluted. There is a very direct connection between yourself and your audience. You will have an editor, but their job is to help you clarify or improve your voice, not change it.
Liz Tuccillo
#23. Jesus said his disciples would be known for their love, not for their placards of protest and angry letters to the editor.
Brian Zahnd
#24. One reads the papers as one wants to with a bandage over one's eyes without trying to understand the facts, listening to the soothing words of the editor as to the words of one s mistress.
Marcel Proust
#25. I use minimal software to make my music - a wav editor and a calculator for my beats to make sure everything falls on mathematical precision. If you were just mapping this out visually, it works by math. I guess it's slightly engineering influenced.
Girl Talk
#26. Dullness is the only crime for which an editor ought to be hung.
Josephus Daniels
#27. I didn't understand in the beginning that the editor didn't want me to know the author. I'd make an effort to meet the author, but it would end up being a disaster because then I had the author telling me what I should be doing.
Peter Sis
#28. Show me a contented newspaper editor and I will show you a bad newspaper.
Arthur Christiansen
#29. What had brought me to New York in the autumn of 1972 was a letter of recommendation written by Norman Mailer, the author of 'The Naked and the Dead' and American literature's leading heavyweight contender, to Dan Wolf, the delphic editor of 'The Village Voice.'
James Wolcott
#30. I stayed at 'Cosmo' well beyond my internship, moving up the ranks over some 15 years to become books editor, then brand director, then editor-at-large - editing everything from an excerpt of Gore Vidal's memoir to writing some of those juicy cover lines myself.
John Searles
#31. I sent The World Well Lost to one editor who rejected it on sight, and then wrote a letter to every other editor in the field warning them against the story, and urging them to reject it on sight without reading it.
Theodore Sturgeon
#32. The one thing that's always been the center of my political thinking - and it goes back to when I was 19 and editor of my college paper - is an abhorrence of the extreme.
Charles Krauthammer
#33. As my editor had no desire to frighten readers with the Romanian pages, he had them translated and published the whole thing in French in 1984. It was only years later, in Romania, that I was able to publish the book as I wrote it.
Dumitru Tepeneag
#34. Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me.
Don McCullin
#35. Most written work is a conversation between the editor and the writer, that the writer essentially fulfills in public, and the editor provides the stage for that to happen as well as the prompts.
Alexander Chee
#36. In my role as Wikileaks editor, I've been involved in fighting off many legal attacks. To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions.
Julian Assange
#37. The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people. To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.
-Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) US-English essayist, editor, anthologist
Logan Pearsall Smith
#38. Being an editor has been a source of great satisfaction, but writing is the thing I truly love.
Bill Keller
#39. I try to be a lot of things for the authors I work with - a careful reader, a helpful friend who also happens to be an experienced writer, a thoughtful editor, and a creative midwife.
Kevin Sampsell
#40. I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.
Colleen McCullough
#41. The writer is editor, marketer, blogger, reader, thinker, designer, publisher, public speaker, budget-maker, contract reader, trouble-shooter, coffee-hound, liver-pickler, shame-farmer, god, devil, gibbering protozoa.
Chuck Wendig
#42. She first one on the production team to die will be the editor.
Alexandra Oliva
#43. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.
Kurt Vonnegut
#44. Start with something messy, get to the point, get an editor, and make it good.
Rands
#45. I often find that when a ruthless editor forces me to trim an article to fit into a certain number of column-inches, the quality of my prose improves as if by magic. Brevity is the soul of wit, and of many other virtues in writing.
Steven Pinker
#46. Professional humorists and cartoonists have to go through a stage in which they have to kill their own internal editor just so they can get stuff out. So whether they believe it or not, they need me on the other end to do that editing for them.
Robert Mankoff
#47. 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
#48. It's because you have no power. You give them all the material and the cinematographer, the director, the editor, boy what they can choose ... You better hope they like you because they can slice and dice and make you look like a damn fool when your face and body are up there on a 30-foot screen.
William Mapother
#49. I come out of journalism, and then book writing. There, it's just you and your editor and maybe a copy desk, looking over your editor's shoulder, and that's the story. It's right there. I can show it to you because it's on paper.
Wendell Pierce
#50. I gave my archive to Emory University because there's a really dear friend who teaches there, Rudolph Byrd, and he's the editor.
Alice Walker
#51. I was sports editor for my high school newspaper, but I think I shied away from journalism.
Jenna Bush
#53. You know, people always think if you start out as a film editor, you shoot less footage. Actually, just the opposite is true. I tend to grab as much coverage as I can because as a former editor I know how important it is to have those few frames.
Robert Wise
#54. In the very existence of this book we have a most concrete example of the manner in which at least one of these marvellous creatures [cats], acquiring both an editor and a publisher, has advanced the eventual complete feline take-over of the human race.
Paul Gallico
#55. I usually submit a novel at a certain number of words, and when I've finished working with my editor, the novel is longer than when I submitted it. I need my editor to help me open up the story.
David Bergen
#56. I have great editors, and I always have. Somehow, great editors ask the right questions or pose things to you that get you to write better. It's a dance between you, your characters, and your editor.
Patricia MacLachlan
#57. I'm a novelist, editor, short story writer. I also teach, and I freelance sometimes as an arts consultant. Most of my books have been published by Warner Books, now known as Grand Central Books.
Nalo Hopkinson
#58. The 'creator' and the 'editor' - two halves of the writer whole - should sleep in separate rooms.
Judith Guest
#59. It would be absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of stories that are nominated for prizes.
Bob Woodward
#60. An unedited manuscript is a first draft of story; but is not a finished product. Too many writers study the craft of writing but do not acquire the skills of an editor.
Michael J. Kannengieser
#61. Thanks to Karen Connelly who read earlier versions of this manuscript and to Ronald Hatch my editor and publisher.
Nancy Holmes
#62. Scandal has a thousand stringers; good news doesn't know the editor's phone number.
William Raspberry
#63. I send all my short fiction to 'Ontario Review' because Joyce Carol Oates is associate editor there, and I think she's fantastic.
Janet Fitch
#64. It's impossible for an editor to know every source for every story.
Rebekah Brooks
#65. I lived through a classic publishing story. My editor was fired a month before the book came out. The editor who took it over already had a full plate. It was never advertised. We didn't get reviewed in any major outlets.
Anita Diament
#66. I think every writer should have tattooed backwards on his forehead, like ambulance on ambulances, the words 'everybody needs an editor.
Michael Crichton
#67. I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.
Mark Twain
#68. I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.
Karen Thompson Walker
#69. A very good editor is almost a collaborator.
Ken Follett
#70. Soap wasn't invented until the Romans, who also invented interesting sex. (Since my editor informs me that a gardening book is not a proper venue for discussions of interesting sex, I will go into this topic in more detail when I write my private memoirs, 'A Petunia Named Desire').
Cassandra Danz
#71. The first duty of an editor is to gauge the sentiment of his reader, and then to tell them what they like to believe ...
Thorstein Veblen
#72. I'm a writer first and an editor second ... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.
Lynn Abbey
#73. I revise and revise and revise. Any editor of mine will tell you how crappy my early drafts are. Revisions are about clarifying and evoking feelings in the reader in the same way they were once evoked in me.
Mary Karr
#74. I once had a story editor ask me not to use the word 'placenta.' I wanted to say: 'Now tell me again how you got here?' Oh, right, an angel of God placed you into the bill of the stork.
Jill McCorkle
#75. Great is journalism. Is not every able editor a ruler of the world, being the persuader of it?
Thomas Carlyle
#76. I personally made lots of mistakes during my 10-12 years as a newspaper editor. Some of which I felt were big mistakes I have tried to address.
Rebekah Brooks
#77. If there is a single person at the nexus of fantasy literature, it is Terri Windling
as editor, as writer, as painter, as muse.
Jane Yolen
#78. Comics have a caste system - an editor has to act in a certain way, an artist has to be humble.
Jack Kirby
#79. I've earned my living in all sorts of terrible ways - as a janitor, a copy editor, a psychotherapist.
Chad Harbach
#80. The editor will be an extension of your hand; the keys will sing as they slice their way through text and thought.
Andrew Hunt
#81. I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years.
Jane Haddam
#82. I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn't really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.
Richard Branson
#83. The first two books that I did by myself were long stories in verse. I knew I could do that because I'd written a lot in verse. But, verse stories are hard to sell, so my editor encouraged me to try writing in prose.
Natalie Babbitt
#84. He was the editor of our paper. He created the publishing house in Hebrew. He was - I wouldn't say the 'guru' - but really he was our teacher and a most respected man. I wrote for the paper of the youth movement.
Shimon Peres
#85. Most of the writers I know have somehow managed to stay in touch with that inner child who's never heard of such a thing as an internal editor.
JoAnn Ross
#86. Someone who does an act. In a democratic society, you're supposed to be an activist; that is, you participate. It could be a letter written to an editor.
Studs Terkel
#87. An editor sleeping with his writer was not as bad as a psychoanalyst sleeping with his patient, or even a professor sleeping with an undergraduate, let alone a president with an intern.
Edward St. Aubyn
#88. For the writer who truly loves language, a trip to the copy editor is like a week at a spa. You come out looking younger, trimmer, and standing straighter.
Betsy Lerner
#89. My first editor used to say that eighty-five per cent of what goes on in a novelist's head is none of his business, a sentiment I've never believed should be restricted to just writers.
Stephen King
#90. Dare to be a sucky skateboarder or a lousy video editor or a completely crappy golfer. If we do only the stuff we're good at, we never learn anything new.
Justin Bieber
#91. An editor has to be selfless, and yet has also to be strong-minded.
Robert Gottlieb
#92. I don't mind being identified as any character as long as I'm doing a good job as an actor. I have done all kinds of roles - from an editor, judge, police officer, murderer to a corrupt businessman.
Boman Irani
#93. For writers, handing a manuscript off to an editor is like walking into a parole hearing. You've done the time but wonder if it's going to satisfy the judge.
Shandy L. Kurth
#94. To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first.
Karen Thompson Walker
#95. When my editor sent me the first two images of Joker's daughter, I was struck by how confident she looked despite her boney appearance and horribly scarred face. So I starting thinking, how did Duela gain such confidence in a world that prizes beauty?
Ann Nocenti
#96. of experience at the Privy Council Office who was hired to be an editor of the French translation but ended up being a primary editor of the entire report. I headed
Kevin Page
#97. SYCOPHANT- One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor.
Ambrose Bierce
#98. 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
#99. My dad was an editor and a writer, and that's really where I would have liked to have gone. But the genetic link was not intact there, so I wound up going into business. But I love to write, still. I'm not a great writer, but I enjoy it.
Anne M. Mulcahy
#100. As a senior editor at Tor Books and the manager of our science fiction and fantasy line, I rarely blog to promote specific projects I'm involved with, for reasons that probably don't need a lot of explanation.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
