Editors On Editing Quotes

#1. Anyone who can not write should.

Harlan Ellison

#2. I think you either have chemistry or you don't. If you could create chemistry in the editing room then there would be no films without chemistry, obviously, because there are a lot of good editors out there who'd be able to take care of that then if that's how it really worked.

Robert Schwentke

#3. They all saw her as a little sister, someone cute and sweet to spend time with when they were feeling homesick or their girlfriends were busy. They didn't see her as a woman, as someone worthy of spending time with, someone worth the risk of losing their heart.

R.L. Mathewson

#4. This is not a crisis, I told myself. You are alive.

Veronica Roth

#5. Imagination is the mad boarder.

Nicolas Malebranche

#6. Most of these editors, as they call themselves, couldn't even effectively edit a haiku.

Frank Black

#7. The border between editing and ghostwriting is, at its extremes, a bit porous. An editor really improves and sometimes restructures a manuscript and suggests changes.

Judith Thurman

#8. 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

#9. Everyone needs an editor.

Timothy Foote

#10. The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.

George Carlin

#11. What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable.

Roger Ebert

#12. When you are acting in a film, you have no idea what scene the editor is going to choose. For instance, after you have directed, you feel more comfortable delivering a performance. Because you know the real performance is put together in the editing room.

Dolph Lundgren

#13. Every writer, of course, has very specific ideas about editors. But writers seldom get the last word on anything.

Terry McDonell

#14. I'm a fierce editor! I don't edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level - a comma here, a word there.

Lydia Davis

#15. I would rather do three or four small parts every year as opposed to some of the lower-hanging fruit that might get my name above the title.

Jason Bateman

#16. I wanted to put a sheet in explaining what all the songs are about, but they didn't do it.

Dick Dale

#17. Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome.

Christopher Hitchens

#18. While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism.

Tiffany Madison

#19. Years working at a newspaper. You learn to write fast and reasonably good and in a manner which does not require substantial editing. Or your editors and copyeditors stab you to death and hang your corpse in the newsroom as a warning to the other staff writers.

John Scalzi

#20. And then my editor really likes that because he's left alone to do what ... to create those things instead of me breathing over his shoulder and I like it because I don't have to sit in the editing room all day. I get to watch just dailies.

Nicholas Stoller

#21. 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

#22. Being editors is not the best way to wealth. We all feel this now, and highwaymen are not respected any more like they used to be.

E. Nesbit

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

Gene Fowler

#24. I really only became an editor, or started doing my own editing because I was filming the docs and you simply can't keep an editor on for as long as it takes so.

John Hyams

#25. I love the auditioning process. I love working with the technical guys. I absolutely love the editing room. That was completely fascinating to me, working with an editor in crafting the thing into something you had in your head.

Neil Gaiman

#26. It is better to live rich than to die rich.

Samuel Johnson

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

Terri Windling

#28. Free trade is meaningless unless there is also fair trade.

Michael Crichton