Top 100 Quotes About Editors
#1. I've always wanted editors that actually edited my poems.
Victoria Chang
#2. Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors.
All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?"
They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again.
Steven Pressfield
#3. Spooner noticed another, smaller Marine Corps tattoo encircling Marlin's ankle: Semper Fi Forever. Everywhere he went these days, Spponer witnessed America's crying need for more copy editors.
Pete Dexter
#4. The natural creativity of the staff morphed 'The Daily Beast' very fast into what has become a newsroom. Aggregation lives on the Cheat Sheet, the video player, and in the breaking news slot in the first big box. The rest is all original, generated by Beast writers and editors.
Tina Brown
#5. When I first started with 'Twilight,' I didn't have any experience. I didn't know what I was doing. So I was pretty intimidated by the editors and the publishers, and I felt like I was a kid in school with the principal telling me what to do! It was hard for me.
Stephenie Meyer
#6. When finally I mustered the courage to tell a novelist friend that I was talking to editors about a biography, her reply was, 'Oh, that's okay. That's not a real book.'
Stacy Schiff
#7. It's not Brits who think American readers are a bunch of whinging morons with the geo-social understanding of a wire coathanger, it's American editors.
Terry Pratchett
#8. When I talk to friends and editors about possible projects, especially about projects that might come with a significant cash advance, they usually suggest a biography. Sometimes I'm tempted, but the prospect of spending years researching and writing about someone else's life offends my vanity.
Michael Dirda
#9. 51% of the French people - who are not very religious - were thinking that what "Charlie Hebdo" did was unwise. They aren't asking for a law to prevent Charlie Hebdo from publishing caricatures, but they are calling on its editors to be a bit more sensible.
Tariq Ramadan
#10. Comic scripts are full-on collaborations, not only with your artist, but your editors and colorists and letterers and PR folks, etc. Writing comics reminds me of my days as a journalist, working on a staff of fun, smart people.
Duane Swierczynski
#11. The personal opinions of the editors have no kind of weight in the eyes of the public: the only use of a journal is, that it imparts the knowledge of certain facts, and it is only by altering or distorting those facts that a journalist can contribute to the support of his own views.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#12. The last thing reporters and editors want to be told is what to do and how to write. They don't want to be some politically correct, Orwellian, kind of like "you're telling me how to write about ... ?"
Jose Antonio Vargas
#13. The publishing industry, unsurprisingly, is full of different people who love different things and express that love in different languages. Find the people, the editors and agents, with whom you share some language, and some sense of what makes literature worth reading.
Leslie Jamison
#14. I walked all around it [the Guggenheim Bilbao] and couldn't find one clear, clean shot. To make things worse, the weather was lousy. Nothing about this rang commercial money shot. In a situation like this there's only one thing to do: forget about pleasing editors, please yourself.
Robert Polidori
#16. I've had editors over the years who couldn't find a clue if it was stapled to their butt.
Len Wein
#17. The Difference between Writers and Editors.
Writers are creative using one end of a pencil.
Editors are more adept using the opposite end.
Roy A. Higgins
#18. I think on civilian casualties they could do more. It's actually something I've discussed with the editors involved. They're aware of it, and I'm hopeful that there will be more reporting on that.
Daniel Okrent
#19. All our reporters and editors now work seamlessly in print and online. This integration has transformed the way we work. I believe this is vital to the success and growth of newspapers.
Lionel Barber
#20. I used to give her [my wife] to read the column every week before I sent it to the editors. And sometimes she was so mad - are you crazy? You're not going to send that, or, you're not going to write that about me. So I would go, OK. You have five hours. Go ahead, write the column yourself.
Sayed Kashua
#21. When I write, I tend to be quite cut off from the world. At that point of time, I'm not thinking about editors, publishers or readers. I write the story the way it comes to me.
Amish Tripathi
#22. The best comics editors have the smallest egos. The worst ones feel like they have to justify their salaries by making changes just so they can leave their fingerprints. Every creative medium has those guys, and they're all loathsome.
Mark Waid
#23. Editors may think of themselves as dignified headwaiters in a well-run restaurant but more often [they] operate a snack bar ... and expect you to be grateful that at least they got the food to the table warm.
Thomas B. Griffith
#24. I worry about every newspaper. I worry about the financial undertaking, and I worry that somehow the loss of the sale of the paper version will affect their ability to have journalists and editors and producers. We really need those.
Jeffrey Zeldman
#25. The paradox of being in an industry where other people are usually the gatekeepers: publishers, editors - there are a lot of barriers to having control over your career. But coming out of hip-hop, the mindset was always to create your own.
Adam Mansbach
#26. Editors of conservative magazines aren't out trying to raise money. The money is there; the cash reserves are in the bank.
David Brock
#27. I'm at a stage in my career where I don't expect or get too much editorial input into what I'm doing. I have a proven track record of success, so my editors are willing to cut me some slack even when a particular approach is not to their personal taste.
Grant Morrison
#28. On a book like 'X-Men,' you have to stay true to the established fiction, working with editors to ensure continuity, sometimes across multiple titles.
Joe Madureira
#29. I've got a folder full of rejection slips that I keep. Know why? Because those same editors are now calling my agent hoping I'll write a book or novella for them. Things change. A rejection slip today might mean a frantic call to your agent in six months.
MaryJanice Davidson
#30. I believe I'm a better writer now than I was when I started. I'm grateful that I had good guidance because you don't make it in this business without good editors and a lot of support from your publishers.
Sharon Draper
#31. Don't talk about writing. Write. Don't show unfinished work to anyone. Don't show finished work to non-writers. Get your opinions, not from friends and family, but by sending your work out to editors. An endless stream of rejection slips means you need to learn more. So learn more.
Holly Lisle
#32. As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them.
Piers Anthony
#33. The publisher has told - you know, if these editors, Andres Martinez and Nick Goldberg, were the least bit honest about this, they would tell you the publisher has told them he wants the editorial page to be conservative.
Robert Scheer
#34. Writing is new, relatively speaking. Story telling is ancient. Tell your story first putting aside all other worries. Leave fretting over homonyms, semicolons, and Oxford commas to editors and friends you can be bribe with baking.
Ada Maria Soto
#35. We are not only a civilization of amateur photographers; we are amateur curators, editors, and publishers.
Charlotte Cotton
#36. I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.
C.S. Forester
#37. Reviewers, critics, guest editors... Such people may have an eye for literary conventions and contrivances, allusions and innovations on the art. But what are their tastes based on? Do they tend to choose work that most resembles theirs?
Amy Tan
#38. Look, obviously that was - created quite a firestorm, but Newsweek editors have made clear that this was a situation where, you know, a solid, well-placed source provided some information.
Michael Isikoff
#40. As Christians, we are to be newsboys and not editors of the gospel.
Adrian Rogers
#41. Text files are readable by countless editors and utilities, are non-proprietary, are easily shared with anyone, and are guaranteed to be readable in the future.
Daniel Goldman
#42. I don't think we can afford to emulate the beauty editors of fashion magazines, airbrushing out blemishes and hawking a political ideal in which progressive people have no acne, no stupid remarks.
Anna Bondoc
#43. Newspapers and their editors have to become as accountable as the rest of us - they are not 'a special case,' and they have only themselves to blame for having lost the argument for 'exceptionalism' - and with it the right to 'self-regulation.'
David Puttnam
#44. I realized that what I was saying was threatening, somehow, to the editors of women's magazines. That it threatened the very world they were trying to paint, what I then called the "feminine mystique."
Betty Friedan
#45. That's why editors and publishers will never be obsolete: a reader wants someone with taste and authority to point them in the direction of the good stuff, and to keep the awful stuff away from their door.
Walter Jon Williams
#46. Language doesn't belong to grammarians, linguists, wordsmiths, writers, or editors. It belongs to the people who use it. It goes where people want it to go, and, like a balky mule, you can't make it go where it doesn't want to go.
Rosalie Maggio
#47. I think sometimes I might scare the editors, because they might feel they're getting old and they're not understanding it. The problem lies on their side of the fence, not mine. I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era.
Alexander McQueen
#48. After a certain point, most people, including editors, will tell you everything you do is great.
Ken Follett
#49. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.
John W. Campbell
#50. Editors have grown timid ... a brave advance is almost inevitably followed by quick back-tracking, generally by dilution and debasement of the original intention.
Muriel Rukeyser
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. For while agents and editors often misunderstand their market and sometimes reject good or even great works, they do prevent a vast quantity of truly execrable writing from being published.
Laura Miller
#54. 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
#55. There is a lot of talk about the betrayal of Judas, and people are not aware that it is happening again. Christ is being sold again, not to the leaders of the Sanhedrin for thirty pieces of silver but to editors and booksellers for millions of dollars ...
Raniero Cantalamessa
#56. I have to trust that if a story is strong, it can find its readership, and good editors can steer me well.
Julie Berry
#57. Samuel Marshak was one of the founders of modern Russian children's literature. Soviet children used to know his poems by heart, but only since glasnost have American editors shown any interest in issuing his poems here.
Michael Patrick Hearn
#58. I represent a body image that wasn't accepted in high fashion before, and I'm very lucky to be supported by the designers, stylists, and editors that I am: ones that know this is fashion; this is art. It can never stay the same. It's 2015.
Gigi Hadid
#59. 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
#60. The human authors and editors of the Old Testament brought their own experiences and presuppositions to the task of writing. We don't often think about this when we read the Bible.
Adam Hamilton
#62. Liberman said to me, 'I must cut back on the work you do for Vogue. The editors don't like it. They say the photographs burn on the page . After some years, I began to understand that what they wanted of me was simply a nice, sweet, clean-looking image of a lovely young woman.
Irving Penn
#63. And at that point, I think my experience in covering the subject helped me. I think editors felt comfortable with the idea of me telling this story because I had demonstrated that I know this business pretty well.
Laura Hillenbrand
#64. Contrary to popular belief, editors and agents are gagging for good books.
Meg Rosoff
#65. I have, as may be apparent, not much respect for editors as a class.
Piers Anthony
#66. There won't be editors in the future with the Internet world, with citizen reporting. That doesn't scare me.
Matt Drudge
#67. The requests for blurbs seem to come in waves. I'm not sure what precipitates them. I think it must be excruciating for editors to draft those elaborate letters asking for a blurb, and I know it's torturous for us writers to ask directly. But publishers encourage us to. Rock and a hard place.
Miriam Toews
#68. Very few editors worry about heresy - their goals are much too commercial, thank goodness.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
#69. If I took a month off, I was likely to be replaced by one of the other, say, two hundred freelancers vying to get my assignments. If I took six months off to have a baby, I believed I would be written off by my editors. I was in a man's profession.
Lynsey Addario
#70. And before that, there was, oh, I don't know, editors experiencing demonic possessions and devouring lagging midlist writers. It's always something.
John Scalzi
#71. To practice - write each and every day if possible - then try to attend professional writer's conferences where you can learn your craft, get to know fellow writers, and meet editors and agents.
James Dashner
#72. William Packard surely must be one of the great editors of our time.
James Dickey
#73. Perhaps some guest editors would keep Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in their peripheral vision. But Sylvia recognized their execution as the most extreme and gruesome example of McCarthy's red-baiting paranoia.
Elizabeth Winder
#74. Stuff that's truly off-trail was what appealed to 'Weird Tales' editors.
Robert Weinberg
#75. If there had been three public editors before me, the body might have absorbed it a little bit better.
Daniel Okrent
#76. [EDITORS' NOTE: For support in dealing with the illness or loss of a loved one due to an illness, call Kids Konnected at 800-899-2866.]
Jack Canfield
#77. In my experience (I am the lone father of an eight-year-old boy who lost his mother when he was one year old), parenting is the most difficult of all jobs: forget your chief executives, editors, prime ministers and the like - parenting is far more challenging.
Martin Jacques
#78. Authors worry. We worry about writing. Worry about our editors, our agents, our reviews, and our readers. We worry about everything, including all forms of social media including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and personal websites.
David Macinnis Gill
#79. 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
#80. The Central Propaganda Department is the highest-ranking censorship agency in China. And it has control over everything from the appointment of newspaper editors to university professors to the way that films are cut and distributed.
Evan Osnos
#81. Twitter is like overhearing people's conversations, which is exactly what dictionary editors have been wishing we could do for years.
Erin McKean
#82. Even when influential political and media figures vehemently complained about the criticisms I wrote, Salon's editors unfailingly stood behind my work.
Glenn Greenwald
#83. Authors," he murmured with a grin. "You all think your work is flawless, and anyone who tries to change a single word is an idiot."
"And editors consider themselves the most intelligent people they know," Amanda shot back.
Lisa Kleypas
#84. By and large, reporters and editors are devoutly secular and deeply distrustful of those who act on faith.
Don Feder
#85. I have always had a hard time revising my work as a journalist, which was never much of a problem. You always have editors as backstops. Their job is to perfect your story. Most of them want to be useful.
Jon Weisman
#86. When I first quit my day job, I was terrified. I called my editors and said I'm trying to make a go of this, and they threw every contract at me they could. And for two years, I had a book or an anthology out every month.
MaryJanice Davidson
#88. Editors always amputate the brain first and preserve a good-looking corpse.
Robert Anton Wilson
#89. Editors seek out the first novels with the seductiveness of Don Juans; the pleasure of discovery is one of the obvious reasons.
William Targ
#90. I depend on good editors and a good director.
Indira Varma
#91. 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
#92. VI was predecessor to hundreds of word processing systems. By now, Unix folks see it as a bit stodgy - it hasn't the versatility of Gnu-Emacs, nor the friendliness of more modern editors. Despite that, VI shows up on every Unix system.
Clifford Stoll
#93. I believe that all brands will become storytellers, editors and publishers, all stores will become magazines, and all media companies will become stores. There will be too many of all of them. The strongest ones, the ones who offer the best customer experience, will survive.
Natalie Massenet
#94. The Islamophobia phobes, (ph) the writers and the editors and the talking heads who deny an existence of evil while blaming those who speak up. There no difference - different than the apologists for communism. As communism killed millions, they, they denied it.
Greg Gutfeld
#95. The people who despise America are the editors of the 'New Statesman.' Their green-card applications must have been turned down.
P. J. O'Rourke
#96. Embarrassed journalists ask me embarrassing questions, and they get embarrassing answers, and then hand out embarrassing stories to the embarrassing editors, who put them to the front pages of newspapers. When is this going to end?
Yao Ming
#97. I think I'm equally as abusive as the editors normally are for the "Letters and Tomatoes" column, which is the fan mail part of MAD Magazine and an ongoing feature.
Al Yankovic
#98. I think that they had afforded me many opportunities to do good work there, and I think I did. It was a wonderful four years. I really worked with some great people, terrific producers, terrific editors.
Connie Chung
#99. When I came out publicly, some photo editors had a field day searching for pictures of me with a limp wrist or some other stereotypical gay signifier - as though, after decades in the public eye, they'd suddenly come across a trove of shots where I looked like a Cher impersonator.
James McGreevey
#100. 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
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