Editors Quotes

We no longer live in a mass-media world with a few centralized choke points with just a few editors in charge, operated by commercial entities and governments. There is a new, radically different mode of information and attention flow: the chaotic world of the digitally networked public sphere (or spheres) where ordinary citizens or activists can generate ideas, document and spread news of events, and respond to mass media. This new sphere, too, has choke points and centralization, but different ones than the past. The networked public sphere has emerged so forcefully and so rapidly that it is easy to forget how new it is. Facebook was started in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. The first iPhone, ushering in the era of the smart, networked phone, was introduced in 2007. The wide extent of digital connectivity might blind us to the power of this transformation. It should not. These dynamics are significant social mechanisms, especially for social movements, since they change the operation of a key resource: attention… Attention is oxygen for movements. Without it, they cannot catch fire. ~ Zeynep Tufekci

Indeed, the city has been excavated continuously by German archaeologists since 1906 (Kuhrt 2010, 1:234). Hattusa was located both within the center of Anatolia and the middle of the Hittite territory in a strategic hill-top position (van de Mieroop 2007, 121). As such, Hattusa was the center of Hittite religion (discussed further in depth below), and it was ideally located in the middle of Anatolia's agricultural breadbasket ~ Charles River Editors

On the other track I got to talk with Jon Poll, my editor, and we go into more detail about the decisions we made in both the production and the post-production. So I hope the combination becomes something worth collecting. ~ Jay Roach

Photojournalist? With a few exceptions, those of us working as photojournalists might now more appropriately call ourselves illustrators. For, unlike real reporters, whose job it is to document what's going down, most of us go out in the world expecting to give form to the magazine, or to newspaper editor's ideas, using what's become over the years a pretty standardized visual language. So we search for what is instantly recognizable, supportive of the text, easiest to digest, or most marketable - more mundane realities be damned. ~ Eugene Richards

What is an editor but a cross between a fall guy and a father figure? arthur koestler ~ Arthur Koestler

Book-publishing is all about politics. Agents, editors, which books will be puffed, which ignored, etc. ~ Alexander Theroux

This is apparently a little promotional ¶ where we're supposed to explain "how and why we came to" the subject of our GD series book (the stuff in quotations is the editor's words). The overall idea is to humanize the series and make the books and their subjects seem warmer and more accessible. So that people will be more apt to buy the books. I'm pretty sure this is how it works. The obvious objection to such promotional ¶s is that, if the books are any good at all, then the writers' interest and investment in their subjects will be so resoundingly obvious in the texts themselves that these little pseudo-intimate Why I Cared Enough About Transfinite Math and Where It Came From to Spend a Year Writing a Book About It blurblets are unnecessary; whereas, if the books aren't any good, it's hard to see how my telling somebody that as a child I used to cook up what amounted to simplistic versions of Zeno's Dichotomy and ruminate on them until I literally made myself sick, or that I once almost flunked a basic calc course and have seethed with dislike for conventional higher-math education ever since, or that the ontology and grammar of abstractions have always struck me as one of the most breathtaking problems in human consciousness - how any such stuff will help. The logic of this objection seems airtight to me. In fact, the only way the objection doesn't apply is if these ¶s are really nothing more than disguised ad copy, in which case I don't see why anyone reading them should ~ David Foster Wallace

Looking at a first assembly is kind of like looking at an overgrown garden. You can't just wade in with a weed whacker; you don't yet know where the stems of the flowers are. ~ Walter Murch

By the close of 2015, the queen had visited 128 countries. Her most popular destination was Canada (27 visits), followed by Australia (18 visits). When asked to explain her desire to explore, Elizabeth reportedly had a simple yet logical explanation. "I have to be seen to be believed. ~ The Editors Of LIFE

I had a wonderful and very successful career in New York and had the privilege of working with some of the best editors and publishers in the business. ~ Teresa Medeiros

I suspect that every teacher hears the same complaints, but that, being seldom a practicing author, he tends to dismiss them as out of his field, or to see in them evidence that the troubled student has not the true vocation. Yet it is these very pupils who are most obviously gifted who suffer from these disabilities, and the more sensitively organized they are the higher the hazard seems to them. Your embryo journalist or hack writer seldom asks for help of any sort; he is off after agents and editors while his more serious brother-in-arms is suffering the torments of the damned because of his insufficiencies. Yet instruction in writing is oftenest aimed at the oblivious tradesman of fiction, and the troubles of the artist are dismissed or overlooked. ~ Dorothea Brande

I have been a journalist, off and on, since I was 17. I was a copy boy for the 'New York Times,' when it had an edition in Paris, in 1963. I sold the paper in the streets by day and tore wire copy off the tele-printer for the editors making up the edition by night. ~ Michael Ignatieff

My guess is that the editor [Cincinnati Post] wanted his own Jeff MacNelly (a Pulitzer winner at 24), and I didn't live up to his expectations. My Cincinnati days were pretty Kafkaesque. ~ Bill Watterson

It's a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so at the end of a lot of years, you would have something to show besides a wheelbarrow of rejection slips. Instead you could have enough bricks to build a house. ~ Jerry Spinelli

To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first. ~ Karen Thompson Walker

Many people - especially those people who earn livings by convincing editors and bookers that rich and influential strangers consider their thoughts and opinions interesting - have ideas about who should or should not run for president. ~ Alex Pareene

There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it's wonderful. ~ Theodore White

I know the Press only too well. Almost all editors hide away in spider-dens, men without thought of Family or Public Interest or the humble delights of jaunts out-of-doors, plotting how they can put over their lies, and advance their own positions and fill their greedy pocketbooks by calumniating Statesmen who have given their all for the common good and who are vulnerable because they stand out in the fierce Light that beats around the Throne. Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Whatever influence you have, it's only for a small amount of time. When Sir Frank (Packer) sold the Daily and Sunday Telegraph to Rupert Murdoch in 1972, I lost my position as women's editor. Suddenly the phones stopped ringing. All the people who said they were my friends, I didn't hear from them. I was only in my 20's, and that was a sobering lesson to learn: how fleeting everything is, and how easily it can be taken away from you. So you never take yourself too seriously, you never think you're too important. ~ Ita Buttrose

Great editors do not discover nor produce great authors; great authors create and produce great publishers. ~ John Farrar

What the president never accepted, or even clearly understood – as most people don't understand – is the autonomy editors have, and must have, to produce a good newspaper. I used to describe it as liberty, not license. ~ Katharine Graham

Copy editors are very important and too rarely praised. ~ Jane Lindskold

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

There is a liberal bias. It's demonstrable. You look at some statistics. About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic, they have for a long time. There is a, particularly at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors and the so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias. ~ Evan Thomas

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

Using film was so much easier than the digital technology of today. But digital is still at the beginning of what it can be and they'll be fixing all those problems. It's just too complicated - negatives, tinting, flashing - it's a whole new system that takes a lot of time. Of course, it's not as physical. Even the editing. You used to feed a piece of celluloid into an editor. [Digital] is not expensive and that is an advantage, but I must say that I don't love it. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

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. ~ Matt Walsh

As a linguist, I see the arbitrariness of strictures editors force on me as a writer. ~ John McWhorter

Magazines are about trust and partnership: We, the editors, will strive always to keep you engaged; you, the readers, are free to engage with us or to reject us. ~ Stefano Tonchi

Everyone needs an editor. ~ Timothy Foote

While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism. ~ Tiffany Madison

...The editors of (i)Life(i) rejected Kerész'a photographs when he arrived in the United States in 1937 because, they said, his images 'spoke too much'; they made us reflect, suggested a meaning - a different meaning from the literal one. Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is (i)pensive(i), when it thinks. ~ Roland Barthes

This was the first time since I'd started
working there that I hadn't received a look of all-out disgust or, at the very least, a snarky
comment, and all it had taken was a SWAT team of New York fashion editors, a
collection of Parisian hair and makeup stylists, and a hefty selection of the world's finest
and most expensive clothing. ~ Lauren Weisberger

You always want to go out there with the best book possible, so I listen to what my editors say, and even if they don't know how to fix it, I always seem to find a way. 'Trust Your Eyes' is the best book I've written, and I don't know if I can do any better. ~ Linwood Barclay

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

A film actor is just a victim of directors and editors. ~ Helena Bonham Carter

By and large, reporters and editors are devoutly secular and deeply distrustful of those who act on faith. ~ Don Feder

I think I cause a lot of headaches for editors - it's impossible to keep up with the ridiculous amount of changes I make. ~ Shane McCrae

What a pity when editors review a woman's book, that they so often fall into the error of reviewing the woman instead. ~ Fanny Fern

There really are so many lines of work that you can join that don't have to only be design. And that was one that particularly interested me a lot, because the editors could appreciate all the trends, all the designs and all the work of the designers. ~ Nina Garcia

There's something about the alchemy of the show - the actors, the writers, the directors, the editors - that makes 'Parenthood' unique. You get so deeply embedded with these characters because you go through life with them, and that's our priority. ~ Jason Katims

The final advantage is the same that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like to write better than everyone else, you have to want to write better than everyone else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you've written against the various middlemen--editors, agents, and publishers--whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards are not as high. Too many writers are browbeaten into settling for less than their best. ~ William Zinsser

The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment. ~ H.L. Mencken

My objective is to create my own world and these images which we create mean nothing more than the images which they are. We have forgotten how to relate emotionally to art: we treat it like editors, searching in it for that which the artist has supposedly hidden. It is actually much simpler than that, otherwise art would have no meaning. You have to be a child - incidentally children understand my pictures very well, and I haven't met a serious critic who could stand knee-high to those children. We think that art demands special knowledge; we demand some higher meaning from an author, but the work must act directly on our hearts or it has no meaning at all. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

And that's another piece of advice I'll give junior writers; when you get to the point where they take you to lunch, let the editor suggest where to go. ~ Jerry Pournelle

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. ~ Lord Chesterfield

[Lockyer] ... sometimes forgets he is only the editor and not the author of Nature.
[Lockyer was the first editor of Nature.] ~ James Whitbread Lee Glaisher

There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jesus. The author of this book is not a single individual, but is at least three different writers/editors, who did their layered work over a period of 25 to 30 years. ~ John Shelby Spong

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.' ~ Rick Bragg

I had published a co-edited book with Oxford a decade ago, my first book actually. Years later I found myself having lunch with Lori Stone, who was an editor at Oxford at that time. We connected at a conference and over the course of lunch she told me about a wonderful new series she had just developed called Understanding Research. ~ Patricia Leavy

He left to do whatever editors do. ~ Bill Bryson

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn't really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going. ~ Richard Branson

An early editor characterized my books as 'romantic comedy for intelligent adults.' I think people see them as funny but kind. I don't set out to write either funny or kind, but it's a voice they like, quirky like me ... And you know, people like happy endings. ~ Elinor Lipman

Pretty soft!' he cried. 'To have to come and live in New York! To have to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St Vitus's dance, and imagine that they're having a good time because they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn't come near the place if I hadn't got to see editors occasionally. There's a blight on it. It's got moral delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!'
I felt rather like Lot's friends must have done when they dropped in for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
'It would kill me to have to live in New York,' he went on. 'To have to share the air with six million people! TO have to wear stiff collars and decent clothes all the time! To - ' He started. 'Good Lord! I suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a ghastly notion!'
I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
'My dear chap!' I said, reproachfully.
'Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?'
'Jeeves,' I said coldly. 'How many suits of evening clothes have we?'
'We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets- '
'Three.' ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I do have a small collection of traditional SF ideas which I've never been able to sell. I'm known as a fantasy writer and neither my agent nor my editors want to risk my brand by jumping genre. ~ Lynn Abbey

The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer. ~ Steve Martin

Those reporters, writers, photographers, and editors are the best Americans I know. They cherish the ideals of their imperfect profession and of the Republic whose freedoms, equally imperfect in practice have so often made those ideals real. They want desperately to do good, honorable work. In spite of long hours and low pay, they are insistently professional. They are also brave.

I can't ever forget that in Indochina 65 journalists were killed in the course of recording the truth about that war. . . .Reporters and photographers did not stop dying when Vietnam was over. They have been killed in Lebanon and Nicaragua, in Bosnia and Peru, and in a lot of other places where hard rain falls.

I can't believe that these good men and women died for nothing. I know they didn't. They died because they were the people chosen by the tribe to carry the torch to the back of the cave and tell the others what is there in the darkness. They died because they were serious about the craft they practiced. They died because they believed in the fundamental social need for what they did with a pen, a notebook, a typewriter, or a camera. They didn't die to increase profits for the stockholders. They didn't die to obtain an invitation to some White House dinner for a social-climbing publisher. They died for us.

As readers or journalists, we honor them when we remember that their dying was not part of a plan to make the world cheaper, baser, or dumber. They died to ~ Pete Hamill

I have SO many books I didn't sell. Some my agent rejected outright, others made it all the way to my editor to be turned away. Not everything is a winner, which is tough when you've devoted eight or nine months of your life to something. ~ Sarah Dessen

An editor is bound to avoid the meshes of the law, which are always infinitely more costly to companies, or things, or institutions, than they are to individuals. ~ Anthony Trollope

But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world. ~ Betsy Lerner

Editors are, at heart, twelve: if we can construe something as a fart or sex (or a fart AND sex) joke, we will. ~ Kory Stamper

It began to falter not when the book publishers who loved books gave way to those who preferred profits to reading. It happened when publishers and editors cut back on their drinking. If there is one national flower in book publishing, it is the martini. ~ Al Silverman

One of the things I regret is that magazines now are so lifestyle-orientated that the opportunity to do bigger projects is gone. This is a serious misjudgment on the part of magazine editors. ~ Martin Parr

Our editors, I'm afraid, have come to believe that the photograph is an end in itself. They've forgotten that the photograph is only the subsidiary, the little brother, of the word. ~ Roy Stryker

I didn't get fired."
"You didn't punch your boss and get fired from the Tribune? That's what I heard."
"I punched what could loosely be called a colleague for cribbing my notes on a story and since the editor–who happened to be the asshole's uncle–took his word over mine, I quit."
"To write books. Is it fun?"
"I guess it is."
"I bet you killed the asshole in the first one you wrote."
"You'd be right. Beat him to death with a shovel. Very satisfying. ~ Nora Roberts

I lived through a classic publishing story. My editor was fired a month before the book came out. The editor who took it over already had a full plate. It was never advertised. We didn't get reviewed in any major outlets. ~ Anita Diament

The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors' rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science. ~ Julian Schwinger

There won't be editors in the future with the Internet world, with citizen reporting. That doesn't scare me. ~ Matt Drudge

Editors are extremely fallible people, all of them. Don't put too much trust in them. ~ Maxwell Perkins

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. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Sometimes I write less than I'd like but do research. Other times, editor's notes or a copy-edited manuscript or page proofs for a forthcoming novel mean that I need to put my attentions elsewhere for a day or two, but I always come back to writing. ~ Jane Lindskold

Depression, we are told over and over again, is a brain disease, a chemical imbalance that can be adjusted by antidepressant medication. In an informational brochure issued to inform the public about depression, the US National Institute for Mental Health tells people that 'depressive illnesses are disorders of the brain' and adds that 'important neurotransmitters - chemicals that brain cells use to communicate - appear to be out of balance'. This view is so widespread that it was even proffered by the editors of PLoS [Public Library of Science] Medicine in their summary that accompanied our article. 'Depression,' they wrote, 'is a serious medical illness caused by imbalances in the brain chemicals that regulate mood', and they went on to say that antidepressants are supposed to work by correcting these imbalances.
The editors wrote their comment on chemical imbalances as if it were an established fact, and this is also how it is presented by drug companies. Actually, it is not. Instead, even its proponents have to admit that it is a controversial hypothesis that has not yet been proven. Not only is the chemical-imbalance hypothesis unproven, but I will argue that it is about as close as a theory gets in science to being dis-proven by the evidence. ~ Irving Kirsch

Part of the discipline of being an editor is that you have to be a good audience member; your work is to be a surrogate audience member on the films you are working on. ~ Jay Cassidy

I think editors have to come out of a certain kind of community. ~ Bill Joy

As any editor will tell you, startling newsroom revelations are generally met with queries about where the information came from and how the reporter got it. Seriously startling revelations are followed by the vetting of libel lawyers. ~ Graydon Carter

Three-quarters of our sites - Kotaku, Gawker, Jezebel, Deadspin, Gizmodo, Lifehacker - are led by editors who built their careers within Gawker Media. That's the career path. ~ Nick Denton

An editor has to be selfless, and yet has also to be strong-minded. ~ Robert Gottlieb

My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed. ~ Colm Toibin

In fact, Lig never formally resigned his editorship - he merely left his office late one morning, and has never returned since. Though well over a century has now passed, many members of the Guide staff still retain the romantic notion that he has simply popped out for a sandwich and will yet return to put in a solid afternoon's work.
Strictly speaking, all editors since Lig Lury Jr., have therefore been designated acting editors, and Lig's desk is still preserved the way he left it, with the addition of a small sign that says LIG LURY, JR., EDITOR, MISSING, PRESUMED FED. ~ Douglas Adams

Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes. ~ John O'Hara

The true Church of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of the newspapers. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Editors are the literary surgeons of the world. ~ Suzanne Steele

You generally know when someone asks you to do something- am I more writing, or am I more editing? The editor is the best metaphor for your job. ~ Keith Rabois

Who are these bloggers? They're not trained editors at Vogue magazine. There are bloggers writing recipes that aren't tested that aren't necessarily very good, or are copies of what really good editors have created and done. Bloggers create a kind of a popularity but they are not the experts. We have to understand that. ~ Martha Stewart

Authors can get an attitude of us-against-them when it comes to publishers, but learning how authors and editors can work together taught me to look at my work in a different way and to make that work as solid as possible before it ever goes to the publisher. ~ Tracie Peterson

One person can't know or like everything, so an editor needs collaborators whose opinions and expertise he values and can trust. ~ Toni Jerrman

With the possible exception of God during the writing of the Bible, every writer in history has needed an editor. So do you. ~ Donald Davis

It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later.
Or at least that's what my editors hope.
However, I will reveal a secret to you:
I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them unglued, and I like to see how how the characters in the novel cope with this problem.
I have a scret love of chaos. There should be more of it. ~ Philip K. Dick

I don't think anybody reads a book of poetry front to back. Editors and reviewers only. I don't think anybody else does. ~ Billy Collins

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

I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer. ~ Colleen McCullough

In the newspaper business, I was in the last generation before the arrival of the personnel manager. You were hired by editors - and editors who would take a chance on what they perceived to be talent and not hire a resume. ~ Pete Hamill

Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it. ~ Alvin Toffler

Writers' bedtimes vary, but few have been spared the shock of a copy editor's early wake-up call. ~ Bill Walsh

Successful model? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the third person as though you were merely a piece of merchandise. ~ Jessica Lange

I'm not a person who believes in the great difference between women and men as editors. But I do think that quality is key. We're very good at organizing and discipline and patience, and patience is 50 per cent of editing. You have to keep banging away at something until you get it to work. I think women are maybe better at that. ~ Thelma Schoonmaker

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

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. ~ Kenneth Anger

That ideal had become as ossified as the statue of Benjamin Franklin up there. From New York to Los Angeles, American newspapers were yellow and stale before they even came off the press. Dog-beaten by a dwindling readership, financial losses and partisan attacks, editors had stripped them of their personality in an attempt to offend no one. And so there was no more reason to read them. Safety before Truth. Grammar over Guts. Winners before Losers. My eyes traveled down from Franklin to the iron sconces above the entrance. ~ Charlie LeDuff

This impressed me when I was the editor of the Sunday Times [of London] - we had the "Bloody Sunday" killings of 13 unarmed civilians by British paratroopers. We interviewed 500 people for our report, and not one of them could give us a total picture of what was happening. It was like the Rashomon effect multiplied a million times. For a website or even a newspaper to be a collector of information flow is not the highest form of journalism. ~ Harold Evans