Editors Quotes

There is but one art, to omit.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Editors are licensed to be curious.

— William Zinsser

Without worship, we go about miserable.

— Aiden Wilson Tozer

Anyone who can not write should.

— Harlan Ellison

Never throw up on an editor.

— Ellen Datlow

Movies are an editor's medium.

— Stephen Root

A good novel editor is invisible.

— Terri Windling

Procrustes was an editor.

— Robin Skelton

Anyone who edits their own copy has a fool for an editor.

— Donald Davis

Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

— John W. Campbell

He thinks that Schiller and St Paul were just two Partisan Review editors.

— Randall Jarrell

Jonathan Demme is a very sharp editor of his movies.

— Anthony Hopkins

I don't even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much.

— Christopher Hitchens

The job of an editor is to ensure a consistent voice.

— Keith Rabois

if the way ahead is not clear, time is often the best editor of one's intentions.

— Jacqueline Winspear

Contrary to popular belief, editors and agents are gagging for good books.

— Meg Rosoff

I think I'm equally as abusive as the editors normally are for the "Letters and Tomatoes" column, which is the fan mail…

— Al Yankovic

Dare to be a sucky skateboarder or a lousy video editor or a completely crappy golfer. If we do only the stuff…

— Justin Bieber

Critics for established venues are vetted by editors; they usually demonstrate a certain objectivity; and they come with known backgrounds and specialized…

— Michael Dirda

Doing comedy for film is always a challenge because you are in the hands of the editor after the fact. I am…

— Tim Roth

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

— Norman Mailer

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

— Steve Coogan

As an experienced editor, I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and…

— David Mitchell

Every newspaper editor owes tribute to the devil. [Fr., Tout faiseur de journaux doit tribut au Malin.]

— Jean de La Fontaine

Poetry is probably the one field of writing in which it is a mistake to try to psych out editors. In fact,…

— X. J. Kennedy

The best thing about being an artist, instead of a madman or someone who writes letters to the editor, is that you…

— Anne Lamott

I think sometimes I might scare the editors, because they might feel they're getting old and they're not understanding it. The problem…

— Alexander McQueen

There really are so many lines of work that you can join that don't have to only be design. And that was…

— Nina Garcia

Looking at a first assembly is kind of like looking at an overgrown garden. You can't just wade in with a weed…

— Walter Murch

Traditional photojournalists arrive with an idea of what they are going to produce or what the editor wants. I approach a subject…

— Alex Webb

Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let…

— Charles Frazier

For 10 years, I'd been working as a freelance writer and editor, making money but not a living. It was a good…

— Will Allison

Part of what makes a language 'alive' is its constant evolution. I would hate to think Britain would ever emulate France, where…

— J. K. Rowling

If editors truly want to improve their byline ratio, they need to stop lamenting the fact that few women journalists send them…

— Ann Friedman

Let's start with some of the reasons that the press holds its tongue and some of the things that you don't know…

— Geneva Overholser

The beauty with comics - and also the risk - is it is a far smaller number of voices. It's the writer…

— Eric Heisserer

As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read, the corruption of the schools would not matter so much…

— George Bernard Shaw

I wrote a letter to the magazine [Time magazine] pointing out that [Richard] Corliss's comparison of Christopher Lee's Saruman to Osama Bin…

— Viggo Mortensen

I think we'll have a good potato crop this year," a newspaper editor told his housekeeper one morning. "No such thing," asserted…

— James Keller

Who should regulate the media? Who should control the press? The commentariat agonises, as if the choice was between state control through…

— Neal Ascherson