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
What editors are obliged to appear to say that — Naomi Wolf
One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title page, another works away at the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index. — Oliver Goldsmith
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
Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process. — Sydney Pollack
We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship. — George Wald
The main thing is that you have a good editor - one that believes in you and who will give you the feedback that you need to produce a good book. — Christopher Darden
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better. — T. S. Eliot
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. — T. S. Eliot
Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes. — Karl Kraus
No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published. — Russell Lynes
Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator. — Vsevolod Pudovkin
Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director. — Michael Tilson Thomas
Architecture is like writing. You have to edit it over and over so it looks effortless — Zaha Hadid
Short Editor Quotes
Never doubt the courage of the French. They were the ones who discovered that snails are edible. — Doug Larson
If you chase two rabbits,
you catch none. — Confucius
When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don't get to decide that you didn't. — Louis C. K.
You don’t need to be a completely complete human right now … That’s what makes you human. — Tavi Gevinson
Show me a contented newspaper editor and I will show you a bad newspaper. — Arthur Christiansen
The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere. — S. J. Perelman
God never uses anyone greatly until He tests them deeply. — Aiden Wilson Tozer
We have become so engrossed in the work of the Lord that we have forgotten the Lord of the work. — Aiden Wilson Tozer
The road to ignorance is paved with good editors. — George Bernard Shaw
Film Editor Quotes
As a painter you're responsible yourself, 100 percent. In film, you have the editor, the director, the other actors. It has the advantage of not being solitary. — Sylvia Kristel
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. — Steven Spielberg
The cartoonist's work is solitary; even when dealing with editors and assistants, there is no such excitement as to creating unexpected drastic changes for projects. But by the same token, manga can't be drawn by a lot of people, as done in film. — Katsuhiro Otomo
I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel. — Roger Ebert
You know, people always think if you start out as a film editor, you shoot less footage. Actually, just the opposite is true. I tend to grab as much coverage as I can because as a former editor I know how important it is to have those few frames. — Robert Wise
Doing comedy for film is always a challenge because you are in the hands of the editor after the fact. I am hoping I can do some more soon, I enjoy doing comedy. — Tim Roth
The difference with doing a play is that you are in control. In film you are in the hands of the director and the editor and the producer. — Kyle MacLachlan
In film, you're so much in the hands and at the mercy of the editor, so sometimes it's good to watch it just to see how it turns out - it can be so different than how you imagined it. But sometimes it's better to just let it go for your own sense of self worth. — Finn Wittrock
1968 in Paris renewed my options. There was suddenly a desire of inventing new things, and I while I was working as an editor, the assistant editor thought I had a gift, and when he shot his own film, he hired me as his assistant camera, and I trained myself to do the light for him. — Babette Mangolte
My job as a film editor is to construct a dramatic narrative because otherwise it's just a chaotic arrangement of sequences. — Frederick Wiseman
Newspaper Editors Quotes
The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college. — Tony Hillerman
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. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Embarrassed journalists ask me embarrassing questions, and they get embarrassing answers, and then hand out embarrassing stories to the embarrassing editors, who put them to the front pages of newspapers. When is this going to end? — Yao Ming
When I started out, people were afraid of parish priests. Now they're afraid of newspaper editors. — Michael D. Higgins
Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff. — Adlai E. Stevenson
Every newspaper editor says the heart of the paper is the reporter - which is true - except for the pay! — Jack Germond
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
I was the editor of the school newspaper and in drama club and choir, so I was not a popular girl in the traditional sense, but I think I was known for being relatively scathing. — Tina Fey
I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper. — Jeffery Deaver
The hell with the newspapers. Nobody reads the letters to the editor column except the nuts. It's enough to get you down. — Philip K. Dick
Magazine Editors Quotes
Assange is not a 'journalist' any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine 'Inspire' is a 'journalist.' He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. — Sarah Palin
How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good. — Mark Twain
Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off.
Note: Dawkins was quoting a former editor of New Scientist Magazine, who is as yet unidentified (possibly Jeremy Webb) — Richard Dawkins
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
Never the less, at the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen. — Robert E. Howard
I did not go to fashion school. I arrived in New York in 1986 from Kansas City and was working as accessories editor for Mademoiselle Magazine. While working at Mademoiselle I noticed that the market lacked stylish and sensible handbags, so I decided to create my own. — Kate Spade
I got that experience through dating dozens of men for six years after college, getting an entry level magazine job at 21, working in the fiction department at Good Housekeeping and then working as a fashion editor there as well as writing many articles for the magazine. — Judith Krantz
I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years. — Jane Haddam
While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area. — Jerry B. Jenkins
I began using pseudonyms early in my career, when I was being paid a quarter a cent a word for my work, and when I had to write a lot to earn a living. Sometimes I had three or four stories in a single magazine without the editor knowing they were all by me. — Evan Hunter
Letters To The Editor Quotes
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
Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor. — Mark Helprin
In civilized societies, if you are offended by a cartoon, you do not burn flags, take up guns and raid buildings, chant death to your opponents, or threaten suicide bombings. You write a letter to the editor. — Michelle Malkin
Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it. — Alvin Toffler
At one time I thought the Editor of the Lancet would kindly publish a letter from me on the subject, but further reflection led me to doubt whether so insignificant an individual would be noticed without some special introduction. — William Banting
Ultimately, a city is formed by its people and the women in Berkeley are just great. They are opinionated, they have ideas, they belong to boards, and they write letters to editors... really wonderful people. — Rita Moreno
Letters to the editors of English and American newspapers often contain expressions of horror about the new terms that creep into the language, and these expressions are usually accompanied by dire predictions about ruination of the mother tongue. — Peter Farb
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. — Truman Capote
I sent The World Well Lost to one editor who rejected it on sight, and then wrote a letter to every other editor in the field warning them against the story, and urging them to reject it on sight without reading it. — Theodore Sturgeon
We live in the age of communication. Write letters to the editor. Speak to your congressman, to your senator. If you are young, especially young people are taken by this human rights activities. They should organize the universities. — Elie Wiesel
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. — Marcia Angell
SYCOPHANT- One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor. — Sayings
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
God is looking for those with whom He can do the impossible - what a pity that we plan only the things that we can do by ourselves. — Aiden Wilson Tozer
I used to be an editor and I was editing young adult series. I didn't really like the books that I was reading, so I decided that I would write a book about something I'd want to read if I was 16. It turned into a Cinderella story... I developed a proposal and the characters of 'Gossip Girl' for my job. — Cecily von Ziegesar
So, this is my plea to all Western editors and producers: Display the Muhammad cartoon daily, until the Islamists become accustomed to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger. — Daniel Pipes
The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib. — Robert Burchfield
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
Editors seek out the first novels with the seductiveness of Don Juans; the pleasure of discovery is one of the obvious reasons. — William Targ
I have just read your lousy review. You sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an eightulcer man on a four ulcer job ... I have never met you but if I do, you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and a supporter below. — Harry S. Truman
If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work. — Ernest Hemingway
I got a fortune cookie that said, "To remember is to understand." I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child. — Anna Quindlen
Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by beliefs that are wrong, and if you try to get anything published by a journal today, you will run against a paradigm and the editors will turn it down — Fred Hoyle
God often hides His blessing in trouble or trial, which makes it all the sweeter when it comes our way. — Aiden Wilson Tozer
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping. — Jean Cocteau
Publishing your work is important. Even if you are giving a piece to some smaller publication for free, you will learn something about your writing. The editor will say something, friends will mention it. You will learn. — Tim Cahill
In my role as Wikileaks editor, I've been involved in fighting off many legal attacks. To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions. — Julian Assange
It is unsound for an independent editor to be a financial contributor to any cause which would cause any type of special pleading. — Walter Annenberg
The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal. — Ernest Hemingway
He types his labored column -- weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn. — Robertson Davies
Traditional photojournalists arrive with an idea of what they are going to produce or what the editor wants. I approach a subject very much as a street photographer and a wanderer, without preconceptions. I try to leave it extremely intuitive and exploratory. — Alex Webb
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. — Justin Bieber
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
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
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of editor quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about editor to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of editor quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.