The writer who can't do his job looks to his editor to do it for him, though he won't dream of sharing his royalties with that editor.
quote by Alfred A. Knopf
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
Which editor? I can't think of one editor I worked with as an editor. The various companies did have editors but we always acted as our own editor, so the question has no answer.
But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.
quote by Peter Davison
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An Editor becomes kind of your mother. You expect love and encouragement from an Editor.
quote by Jackie Kennedy
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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.
quote by Robert Wise
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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.
quote by Anita Diament
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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.
quote by Theodore Sturgeon
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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It's all about who's where on the food chain. When I'm the story editor, I expect my writers to follow my vision. When I'm working for another editor, I'm obliged to follow their vision.
The Editor
tonight
he will read many poems
and he cannot sleep because as always there will be many poems from me. he asked for them anyway. and everything i have in my mind
will always be poems.
the editor is an insomniac.
and from the hundred that i emailed for his perusal.
i guess. i need only to see one
that he thinks deserves
his choice.
i laugh. how can he ever find that piece of little garbage
as art form?
funny. dear editor, everything is a fake.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.
quote by Colleen McCullough
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A literary journal is intended to connect writer with reader; the role of the editor is to mediate.
quote by John Barton
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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.
quote by Lynn Abbey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Another Plan
Editor Owen, of San Jose,
Commonly known as 'our friend J.J.'
Weary of scribbling for daily bread,
Weary of writing what nobody read,
Slept one day at his desk and dreamed
That an angel before him stood and beamed
With compassionate eyes upon him there.
Editor Owen is not so fair
In feature, expression, form or limb
But glances like that are familiar to him;
And so, to arrive by the shortest route
At his visitor's will he said, simply: 'Toot.'
'Editor Owen,' the angel said,
'Scribble no more for your daily bread.
Your intellect staggers and falls and bleeds,
Weary of writing what nobody reads.
Eschew now the quill-in the coming years
Homilize man through his idle ears.
Go lecture!' 'Just what I intended to do,'
Said Owen. The angel looked pained and flew.
Editor Owen, of San Jose,
Commonly known as 'our friend J.J.'
Scribbling no more to supply his needs,
Weary of writing what nobody reads,
Passes of life each golden year
Speaking what nobody comes to hear.
poem by Ambrose Bierce
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Jeduthan Hawley
There would be a knock at the door
And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop,
Where belated travelers would hear me hammering
Sepulchral boards and tacking satin.
And often I wondered who would go with me
To the distant land, our names the theme
For talk, in the same week, for I've observed
Two always go together.
Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant;
And Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf;
And Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner,
When he prayed to live longer than Editor Whedon;
And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane;
And Emily Sparks with Barry Holden;
And Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock;
And Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones;
And Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine.
And I, the solemnest man in town,
Stepped off with Daisy Fraser.
poem by Edgar Lee Masters
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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.
quote by Robert E. Howard
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Problems Of A Journalist
“I want to get away somewhere and re-read Proust,”
Said an editor of Fortune to a man on Time.
But the fire roared and died, the phoenix quacked like a goose,
And all roads to the country fray like shawls
Outside the dusk of suburbs. Pacing the halls
Where mile-high windows frame a dream with witnesses,
You taste, fantast and epicure, the names of towns along the coast,
Black roadsters throbbing on the highways blue with rain
Toward one lamp, burning on those sentences.
“I want to get away somewhere and re-read Proust,”
Said an editor of Newsweek to a man on Look.
Dachaus with telephones, Siberias with bonuses.
One reads, as winter settles on the town,
The evening paper, in an Irving Place café.
poem by Weldon Kees
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Died Of A Rose
A reporter he was, and he wrote, wrote he:
'The grave was covered as thick as could be
With floral tributes'-which reading,
The editor man he said, he did so:
'For 'floral tributes' he's got for to go,
For I hold the same misleading.'
Then he called him in and he pointed sweet
To a blooming garden across the street,
Inquiring: 'What's them a-growing?'
The reporter chap said: 'Why, where's your eyes?
Them's floral tributes!' 'Arise, arise,'
The editor said, 'and be going.'
poem by Ambrose Bierce
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One of my first jobs was at the Boston Globe. I worked in the sports department six months a year. When I was ready to graduate, the sports editor gave me a job as a schoolboy sports writer.
quote by Will McDonough
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You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual. Most of them are mangled and even have made up stuff in them, that is to say, made up stuff by the writer or editor.
quote by Frank Black
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Writer's Dream
A writer's dream
You keep trying
Never denying to one day achieve
Despite what most believe
A writer's dream
You never give up
Regardless of what others may say
But wait patiently until that day
A writer's dream
Although it's been a while
It made you smile
To see your dream coming through
No matter how long it seemed to you
A writer's dream
You always believed in yourself
That's why your time has come
To be a successful writer
With the privilege of making much income
A writer's dream
You're happy to finally get this far
The world knows just who you are
Now this new sudden fame
Makes you feel like a star
poem by Donielle Smith
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I Am Visited By An Editor And A Poet
I had just won $115 from the headshakers and
was naked upon my bed
listening to an opera by one of the Italians
and had just gotten rid of a very loose lady
when there was a knock upon the wood,
and since the cops had just raided a month or so ago,
I screamed out rather on edge—
who the hell is it? what you want, man?
I’m your publisher! somebody screamed back,
and I hollered, I don’t have a publisher,
try the place next door, and he screamed back,
you’re Charles Bukowski, aren’t you? and I got up and
peeked through the iron grill to make sure it wasn’t a cop,
and I placed a robe upon my nakedness,
kicked a beercan out of the way and bade them enter,
an editor and a poet.
only one would drink a beer (the editor)
so I drank two for the poet and one for myself
and they sat there sweating and watching me
and I sat there trying to explain
that I wasn’t really a poet in the ordinary sense,
I told them about the stockyards and the slaughterhouse
and the racetracks and the conditions of some of our jails,
and the editor suddenly pulled five magazines out of a portfolio
and tossed them in between the beercans
and we talked about Flowers of Evil, Rimbaud, Villon,
and what some of the modern poets looked like:
J.B. May and Wolf the Hedley are very immaculate, clean fingernails, etc.;
I apologized for the beercans, my beard, and everything on the floor
and pretty soon everybody was yawning
and the editor suddenly stood up and I said,
are you leaving?
and then the editor and the poet were walking out the door,
and then I thought well hell they might not have liked
what they saw
but I’m not selling beercans and Italian opera and
torn stockings under the bed and dirty fingernails,
I’m selling rhyme and life and line,
and I walked over and cracked a new can of beer
and I looked at the five magazines with my name on the cover
and wondered what it meant,
wondered if we are writing poetry or all huddling in
one big tent
clasping assholes.
poem by Charles Bukowski
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