Arms Quote by Will Carleton

Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with…

— Mark Twain

“The Book of the Order lay open on his desk, the pages curling up from a spine stitched to last.”

— Hugh Howey

“Editors are the literary surgeons of the world.”

— Suzanne Steele

“A good editor is like a pair of Spanx: firming up the body, making the subject look good, and absolutely invisible.”

— Sandi Layne

I believe an editor's job is to help a writer sound like himself or herself.

— Robert Christgau

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

— Sam Rockwell

“Drafts would be written out in his hunched cursive, the words growing fatter as his pencil dulled against the page.”

— Brian Jay Jones

“He pressed bravely ahead with his story, the outlines and preliminary versions of which by now filled two thick notebooks, reorganizing, redrafting, and obsessively…

— Dennis Etchison

An editor is the uncrowned king of an educated democracy.

— William Thomas Stead

“An editor is someone who is paid to tell a writer what she thinks about how he wrote what he thinks about.”

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

— Thorstein Veblen

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

— Robert Anton Wilson