Editors Quotations | Page 5

From the essay "Twenty-five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again" 1. Journalists sometimes make things up. 2. Journalists sometimes get things wrong. 3. Almost all books that are published as memoirs were initially written as novels, and then the agent/editor said, This might work better as a memoir. 6. Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.

Every writer needs an editor. I don't care how good you are or think you are.

I wanted to put a reference to masturbation in one of the scripts for the Sandman. It was immediately cut by the editor [Karen Berger]. She told me, "There's no masturbation in the DC Universe." To which my reaction was, "Well, that explains a lot about the DC Universe.

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.

Not that I've always loved the movie when they finally come out, or if they ever come out-because many of them don't come out-but I've gotten to work with really good story editors and stuff like that.

A perfect movie is a different thing, but a funny movie is easy. I was really happy that I got everyone that I got. Everybody got to play to their strengths and was paired up in the right scenarios. It was very fortunate. It was exciting, the whole process. It makes more difficulty in editing 'cause there's more footage, but the guy I had handle it was a documentarian editor for a long time, so it was very useful.

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.

Writers take words seriously-perha ps the last professional class that does-and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.

A photographer needs to be a good editor of negatives and prints! In fact, most of the prints I make are for my eyes only, and they are no good. I find the single most valuable tool in the darkroom is my trash can - that's where most of my prints end up.

Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes.

Honestly, I expected to get a cold reception because of my subject matter. But when editors took a look at the story I had to tell, and saw that this was not a parochial story at all, they really warmed to it

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

I think it sort of dawns on you that if you're not gigging constantly you're not actually relevant. You may be relevant to a different part of the media now, to television commissioners and editors, but to a young live-comedy audience you're not, really.

You can write the best book you can, and that might still not be enough. Appeal isn't something that most writers can't strive for or identify. It's something even the best agents and editors can't always identify.

The editors thought if you didn't publish it, much of this would go away. Associated Press kept on wanting pictures, and The News would be slow on letting them have them, so they flooded the town with photographers. The AP started sending pictures all over, and it mushroomed.

The editors thought if you didn't publish it, much of this would go away.

The editors have told Flemming Rose to take a holiday because no one can understand the kind of pressure he has been under.

The economy of Hong Kong is going through a painful restructuring. Advertising is getting more competitive and there's tremendous pressure on editors and reporters to boost sales,

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.

I don't like a kind of workshop that is about editing--I don't want to sit there and be an editor. I don't want to tell someone how to "fix" a poem.

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...?"

What editors are obliged to appear to say that

What editors are obliged to appear to say that men want from women is actually what their advertisers want from women.

I used to sit in the studio with a copy of the (Saturday Evening) Post laid across my knees ... And then I'd conjure up a picture of myself as a famous illustrator and gloat over it, putting myself in various happy situations, surrounded by admiring females, deferred to by office flunkies at the magazines, wined and dined by the editor...

The sole virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor.

There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.

You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder.

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, 'How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?' and avoid 'How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?'

None of the editors I've worked with have ever asked me to pull my punches. They've never asked me to give them anything other than my own interpretation of events.

Without the book business it would be difficult or impossible for true books to find their true readers and without that solitary (and potentially subversive) alone with a book the whole razzmatazz of prizes, banquets, television spectaculars, bestseller lists, even literature courses, editors and authors, are all worthless. Unless a book finds lovers among those solitary readers, it will not live . . . or live for long.

Be persistent. Editors change; tastes change; editorial markets change. Too many beginning writers give up too easily.

Hours is an understatement. I honestly don't know how the director and editor decide each week what actually makes it on the air. There's of course director and cast commentary on each episode on the DVD. We had a blast recording that.

We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.

I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do.

The challenge for me, and for Asian models in general has been convincing editors, stylists and photographers that we can have mass appeal, but Asian, especially Chinese models have become a stronger presence. Just a season or two ago, there weren't many models for me to talk with backstage in my native Mandarin. Now I usually have no trouble finding someone at any show.

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.

Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.

I was just thinking... isn't it lucky that we decided to become co-editors? If one takes a blow to the head, the other can fill in. If the other's lung spontaneoulsy collapses, the one can fill in. It's a perfect system once you think about it." ~Will Landsman

Anyone who can not write should.

If an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him for nothing.

One guy records the voices, another guy times the storyboard, another guy times the sheets, one guy is the story editor. All these jobs should be covered by the director.

If women are all of a sudden complaining all the time about getting sent to Pakistan, then if I were an editor, I probably wouldn't send a woman.

And in Hollywood, you know, everyone is an expert. Most of them are expert editors. They can't direct, they can't write, they can't act, but, by God, they all think they can edit.

When I was in college, I was the editor of the literary magazine and insisted neither the editors nor the writers be specifically identified-only our student numbers appeared on the title page. I love that idea and still do.

By this point, it was clear she wasn't interested in continuing the relationship. What publication on earth would continue a relationship with a writer who would refuse to discuss her work with her editors? What publication would continue to publish a writer who attacked it on TV? What publication would continue to publish a writer who lied about it - on TV and to a Washington Post reporter? ... It's true: Ann is fearless, in person and in her writing. But fearlessness isn't an excuse for crappy writing or crappier behavior.

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

I have to trust that if a story is strong, it can find its readership, and good editors can steer me well.

The fuzzy boundary lines between different readership ages have always puzzled me, so these days I just write what comes, and assume I can fix the mess later with an editor's help.

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.

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.

Regan has been amused, in the intervening years, to watch editors who rolled their eyes at Limbaugh scramble to try to duplicate his success. What people respond to in this culture is loud and brash and pointed and sometimes vulgar -- that`s what gets p... Judith Regan.

Dullness is the only crime for which an editor ought to be hung.

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.

Not too many people know who the editor is.

Eisenstein was a good editor. I was trained as a film editor, and I've no doubt that the editor is key to a film.

That name was a kind of joke, and not a very good one. An author, Leon Lederman, wanted to call it 'that goddamn particle' because it was clear it was going to be a tough job finding it experimentally. His editor wouldn't have that, and he said 'okay, call it the God particle', and the editor accepted it. I don't think he should've have done, because it's so misleading.

When in doubt, delete it.

Being an editor doesn't make you a better writer - or vice versa. The worst thing any editor can do is be in competition with his writer.

Directing is such alchemy, it's so easy to fail. And I've seen people who are great at their jobs because everybody has a go. Editors, DPs, actors, craft services guy, everybody wants to try it out but it is such a diffuse but necessary set of skills that you never know which one this person might lack.

I hate to say that, but the past was much more fascinating. I don't particularly care for any of the current crop of actors. I don't particularly care for any of the current crop of directors. But I have a lot of friends who are editors, and there are a lot of technical things going on here that are interesting.

I have a great editor and I enjoy, in a masochistic way, being ruthless about my own performance. There's an initial point in the editing, if you're directing yourself, especially in my case, where you go, "Ouch, ouch, ouch, I can't watch this." And then, there's a point where you become hard-nosed and just take your neurosis away and go, "What's working? That's okay. That's okay. We can lose that, and lose that." You get objective about it.

In a world where everyone is a publisher, no one is an editor. And that is the danger that we face today.

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.

A good novel editor is invisible.

There were a lot of unique challenges in producing the film, such as the logistical issues inherent in producing a long-term verite film in Pakistan, dealing with Urdu and Punjabi dialogue with an English-speaking editor and all the difficulties in recording, editing and clearing so many music tracks.

I've never had to work out of the arts. I've always either been a writer or an editor, or something where I've made my living from doing what I love. You can't get any better than that.

If you would be a poet, write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance for bullshit.

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

When I wrote my blog and went to fashion week, I got a lot of shade from older editors about paying my dues and educating myself. I get where they were coming from, but it's also weird now to see their institutions scramble to use the internet in a way that's not savvy, but genuinely effective and exciting to people. I've been doing that for years.

I learned early on that it's heartbreaking to - there's the editor that comes in, and then they have to craft the movie together, and sometimes you give a whole performance that's just been cut up, and maybe it's better for it, absolutely, but you still have to deal with the loss of that.

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

I was interested in creating things that I could be proud of and so, you know, I was interested in being an editor of a magazine, things that I could be proud of, and so, you know, I was interested in being an editor of a magazine, but in order to be an editor of a magazine I had to become a publisher as well. I had to pay the bills. I had to worry about the printing and the paper manufacturing and the distribution of that magazine.

So I became a publisher by mistake - well, not quite by mistake, because I wanted to be an editor but I had to make sure the magazine would survive. The point is this: Most businesses fail, so if you're going to succeed, it has to be about more than making money.

My role as the chair of the fashion department at Parsons put me face to face with all the big designers, retailers, and editors. Since I was moving in these new circles regularly, I realized I needed to do something about my own personal style. It was really Diane von Furstenberg who gave me the nudge.

The first duty of an editor is to gauge the sentiment of his reader, and then to tell them what they like to believe...

The reason I was successful in launching my first book with bloggers is this: I assumed that I should spend as much time on a blogger with a million-person readership as I would pitching an editor of a publication with a million person subscription-base.

I think even if you're on a screen or you're in a play, it's always a group effort. It's not just the actors, it's the editor.

I happen to have a public profile. Ditto newspaper editors. It's a result of what I do, not an end.

Movies are an editor's medium.

All science requires mathematics. [Editors' summary of Bacon's idea, not Bacon's wording.]

An editor is like a painter. There is a magic in that.

The greatest films ever made in our history were cut on film, and I'm tenaciously hanging on to the process. I just love going into an editing room and smelling the photochemistry and seeing my editor wearing mini-strands of film around his neck.

The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.

In the mid-2000s, I kind of accidentally became a music editor.

Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors.

EMACS could not have been reached by a process of careful design, because such processes arrive only at goals which are visible at the outset, and whose desirability is established on the bottom line at the outset. Neither I nor anyone else visualized an extensible editor until I had made one, nor appreciated its value until he had experienced it. EMACS exists because I felt free to make individually useful small improvements on a path whose end was not in sight.

You can use any editor you want, but remember that vi vi vi is the text editor of the beast.

Editors, for the most part, don't care ''what'' you've done, or how astounding the physical event may have been. You need to write well. Many others are capable of doing what you have done (probably), so you must write better than they...

It is extremely unfortunate that an editor's own life and practice should be notoriously at variance with his written principles.

Between you and me, I think that may be one of the things that will help with the collaboration, because there are things Eric thinks I'm moving too quickly on, and there are things I think he's dragging out. When it gets to the editor they can arbitrate.

Editors always amputate the brain first and preserve a good-looking corpse.

I always read what I write out loud, and I did that long before any radio thing. My editor finds that unusual.

I was the editor of the News of the World; I was the editor of the Sun and chief executive.

In a highly competitive newspaper market, every editor needs to appeal to female readers to boost their circulation.

To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries

When both my editors say 'This is really bad, you need to change this,' I ignore that at my peril.

Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don't put them on paper.

I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and then was applauded by editors for 'working magic.

I don't want to be an editor! I don't want to direct; I'd be a horrible director. I don't want to write - I have a 'story by' credit on one film I did. And I don't want to edit at all.