Mark Twain Editors Quotations

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

No man has an appreciation so various that his judgment is good upon all varieties of literary work.

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.

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

How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.

I hate editors, for they make me abandon a lot of perfectly good English words.

In Austria an editor who can write well is valuable, but he is not likely to remain so unless he can handle a sabre with charm.

That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they are and get bribes for it and become wealthy.

This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast.

Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that. That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is doing in the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart thing, and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating. They are full of envy and malice, editors are.

The only people who should use the possessive 'we' are kings, newspaper editors, and persons with tapeworms.