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Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. -- T. S. Eliot
The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home. -- John Y. Campbell
I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers. -- C. S. Forester
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 trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery. -- Kate Chopin
So I went out and bought myself a copy of the Writer and Artist Yearbook, bought lots of magazines and got on the phone and talked to editors about ideas for stories. Pretty soon I found myself hired to do interviews and articles and went off and did them. -- Neil Gaiman
Editors are licensed to be curious. -- William Zinsser
A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up. -- Thomas Carlyle
Editors always amputate the brain first and preserve a good-looking corpse. -- Robert Anton Wilson
All science requires mathematics. [Editors' summary of Bacon's idea, not Bacon's wording.] -- Roger Bacon
Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home. -- John W. Campbell
Editors are constantly on the watch to discover new talents in old names. -- Israel Zangwill
Editors always want to know what you're working on, what you're thinking about. -- Mary Downing Hahn
Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. -- Steven Pressfield
Editors are extremely fallible people, all of them. Don't put too much trust in them. -- Maxwell Perkins
The true Church of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of the newspapers. -- Thomas Carlyle
Be persistent. Editors change; tastes change; editorial markets change. Too many beginning writers give up too easily. -- John Jakes
Editors of conservative magazines aren't out trying to raise money. The money is there; the cash reserves are in the bank. -- David Brock
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
Editors seek out the first novels with the seductiveness of Don Juans; the pleasure of discovery is one of the obvious reasons. -- William Targ
Editors are more concerned with the first chapters of a book; that's what everyone reads first in the bookstore or in the online sample. -- Mary Roach
Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are willing to read whatever the tide washes up at their feet. -- Lynn Abbey
Editors and their authors seldom form deep friendships for the same reason that psychiatrists and their patients keep their distance: The relationship requires candor that mixes poorly with intimacy. -- Jason Epstein
I dare say you will try to make me believe that Editors are human. Now I deny that, for I myself have, in past days, had evidence to the contrary. -- Fanny Fern
Editors may think of themselves as dignified headwaiters in a well-run restaurant but more often they operate a snack bar and expect you to be grateful that at least they got the food to the table warm -- Thomas Griffith
Editors may think of themselves as dignified headwaiters in a well-run restaurant but more often [they] operate a snack bar . . . and expect you to be grateful that at least they got the food to the table warm. -- Thomas B. Griffith
Don't market yourself. Editors and readers don't know what they want until they see it. Scratch what itches. Write what you need to write, feed the hunger for meaning in your life. Play at the serious questions of life and death. -- Donald Murray
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... -- Tim Cahill
The information highway is being sold to us as delivering information, but what it's really delivering is data... Unlike data, information has utility, timeliness, accuracy, a pedigree... Editors serve as barometers of quality, and most of an editor's time is spent saying no. -- Clifford Stoll
Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new. -- William Zinsser
Writers have a job to do. Editors do, too. You have to stand ground and cede ground on a case by case basis. When an editor tells me something isn't working and I still believe in it, I tend to think it just isn't working hard enough. -- Jami Attenberg
Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors.All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?"They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again. -- Steven Pressfield
A very good editor is almost a collaborator. -- Ken Follett
The road to ignorance is paved with good editors. -- George Bernard Shaw
A film actor is just a victim of directors and editors. -- Helena Bonham Carter
There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors. -- Stephen Ambrose
Dullness is the only crime for which an editor ought to be hung. -- Josephus Daniels
I think editors have to come out of a certain kind of community. -- Bill Joy
My only claim to fame, if I have one, is that I'm an editor. -- Woody Herman
An Editor becomes kind of your mother. You expect love and encouragement from an Editor. -- Jackie Kennedy
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft. -- H. G. Wells
I think one of the interesting things is that vi is really a mode-based editor. -- Bill Joy
Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff. -- Adlai E. Stevenson
Writers' bedtimes vary, but few have been spared the shock of a copy editor's early wake-up call -- Bill Walsh
Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.' -- Mark Twain
I've had editors over the years who couldn't find a clue if it was stapled to their butt. -- Len Wein
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better. -- T. S. Eliot
Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible. -- David Ogilvy
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. -- Mark Twain
Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed. -- Elbert Hubbard
Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they're lazy and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous. -- Ben Bradlee
Somebody has to pay our editors, writers, journalists, designers, developers, and all the other specialists whose passion and tears go into every chunk of worthwhile web content. -- Jeffrey Zeldman
The Bush administration works closely with a network of rapid response digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops.' -- Al Gore
One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception - at least some of the time, incompetent or crazy. -- John Gardner
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. -- James Nachtwey
Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage? -- Henry David Thoreau
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. -- Kurt Vonnegut
There is always a certain leap of faith that editors have made with their nonfiction writers. If the trust is broken, things can get very embarrassing for the writers and the publisher. -- A. Scott Berg
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. -- Lynn Abbey
Journalists who are devoted to strictly factual reporting take particular pleasure from satirical news outlets that have the liberty to laugh and even mock the hypocrisy that reporters and editors must simply observe without comment. -- Tom Rachman
I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors. -- Carl Sandburg
When I decided to launch my first knitwear line, it was because I saw a void in the basics category. The editors were always looking for cool, fashion-forward tees and sweaters. So that's where I started. -- Alexander Wang
As an editor, I must often tell writers that their stories "do not fit our present needs." But there are times when I want to reply: "Sir, I would not trust you to write a ransom note." -- Richard Conniff
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 error that we tend to make is that we think that women's magazines are what editors want and what their readers want - and thus are social indicators - when, in fact, they are what advertisers want. They're just advertising indicators. -- Gloria Steinem
Nothing's harder than writing. There's no comparison. With directing, you can bounce a lot of ideas around. There's tremendous support - you've got editors and sound mixers. With writing, it's all you, and it's just crippling when people tear up your pages. -- Sylvester Stallone
I believe that all brands will become storytellers, editors and publishers, all stores will become magazines, and all media companies will become stores. There will be too many of all of them. The strongest ones, the ones who offer the best customer experience, will survive. -- Natalie Massenet
I remember when an editor at the National Geographic promised to run about a dozen of my landscape pictures from a story on the John Muir trail as an essay, but when the group of editors got together, someone said that my pictures looked like postcards -- Galen
I remember when an editor at the National Geographic promised to run about a dozen of my landscape pictures from a story on the John Muir trail as an essay, but when the group of editors got together, someone said that my pictures looked like postcards. -- Galen Rowell
Write every day; never give up; it's supposed to be difficult; try to find some pleasure and reward in the act of writing, because you can't look for praise from editors, readers, or critics. In other words, tips that are much easier to give than to take. -- J. R. Moehringer
There were all us baby boomers who had a grammar school education, started to learn, then went on the pill, the whole thing, and so there are today a lot more women writers, editors, producers, and so a lot more women's stories. God, the BBC's practically run by women. -- Julie Walters
When I came out publicly, some photo editors had a field day searching for pictures of me with a limp wrist or some other stereotypical gay signifier - as though, after decades in the public eye, they'd suddenly come across a trove of shots where I looked like a Cher impersonator. -- James McGreevey
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
An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff -- Adlai E. Stevenson
All "little" magazines have the luxury of thinking the reader is the same person as their editors -- William Whitworth
Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible -- David Ogilvy
Editor: A person employed on a newspaper whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed -- Elbert Hubbard
You're at the mercy of the editors' hands. -- Kelly LeBrock
I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors. -- H. L. Mencken
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
They (fashion editors) have always been our secret weapon. -- Anna Wintour
I've always wanted editors that actually edited my poems. -- Victoria Chang
Most writers adore their editors, and I'm no exception. -- Linda Sue Park
What editors are obliged to appear to say that -- Naomi Wolf
I depend on good editors and a good director. -- Indira Varma
I do a lot of brainstorming with my editors. -- Sara Shepard
The end of spring- the poet is brooding about editors. -- Yosa Buson
I've been around so long, most editors think I'm dead. -- Elliott Erwitt
The age of celebrity editors and monstrous staffing are over. -- Felix Dennis
Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can. -- Walter Jon Williams
I don't even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much. -- Christopher Hitchens
Contrary to popular belief, editors and agents are gagging for good books. -- Meg Rosoff
I pay editors. I never ask friends or colleagues to work for free. -- Rigoberto Gonzalez
As Christians, we are to be newsboys and not editors of the gospel. -- Adrian Rogers
William Packard surely must be one of the great editors of our time. -- James Dickey
He thinks that Schiller and St Paul were just two Partisan Review editors. -- Randall Jarrell
Whatever I wrote was heretical. It offended the editors of the women's magazines. -- Betty Friedan
Most of these editors, as they call themselves, couldn't even effectively edit a haiku. -- Frank Black
You had to get everything exactly right or the editors would give you hell. -- Kurt Vonnegut
Art editors and critics - people like me - have become a courtier class. -- Dave Hickey
But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world. -- Betsy Lerner
I've never met a deadline I couldn't miss. I make sure my editors know this. -- Carrie Fisher
I hate editors, for they make me abandon a lot of perfectly good English words. -- Mark Twain
Always remember that if editors were so damned smart, they would know how to dress. -- Dave Barry
Very few editors worry about heresy - their goals are much too commercial, thank goodness. -- Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Book-publishing is all about politics. Agents, editors, which books will be puffed, which ignored, etc. -- Alexander Theroux
There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. -- Terri Windling
Great editors do not discover nor produce great authors; great authors create and produce great publishers. -- John Farrar
After a certain point, most people, including editors, will tell you everything you do is great. -- Ken Follett
When I started out, people were afraid of parish priests. Now they're afraid of newspaper editors. -- Michael D. Higgins
We are not only a civilization of amateur photographers; we are amateur curators, editors, and publishers. -- Charlotte Cotton
Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome. -- Christopher Hitchens
The only people who should use the possessive 'we' are kings, newspaper editors, and persons with tapeworms. -- Mark Twain
Try pitching a story of happiness to your editors and their toes are going to curl up. -- Jim Crace
Write letters to your editors, write to your members of Congress, and write to your news stations. -- Nicholas D. Kristof
There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it's wonderful. -- Theodore White
There are so many magazines and so many editors out there that you have to be different. -- Carine Roitfeld
I think more people now have relationships with agents than with editors. And I don't have an agent. -- Mary Downing Hahn
By and large, reporters and editors are devoutly secular and deeply distrustful of those who act on faith. -- Don Feder
There won't be editors in the future with the Internet world, with citizen reporting. That doesn't scare me. -- Matt Drudge

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