I Always Have Trouble With Titles For My Books. I Usually Have No Title Until The Editor Has To Present The Book And Calls Me Frantically, 'judy, We Need A Title.
Luminary, One Who Throws Light Upon A Subject; As An Editor By Not Writing About It.
Perfection, N. An Imaginary State Of Quality Distinguished From The Actual By An Element Known As Excellence; An Attribute Of The Critic. The Editor Of An English Magazine Having Received A Letter Pointing Out The Erroneous Nature Of His Views And Style, And Signed "perfection," Promptly Wrote At The Foot Of The Letter: "i Don't Agree With You," And Mailed It To Matthew Arnold.
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.
Critics Are Like Eunuchs In A Harem; They Know How It's Done, They've Seen It Done Every Day, But They're Unable To Do It Themselves.
There Are, By The Most Conservative Counting, Two Grave And Deeply Regrettable Collateral Victims Of The Peer-review Gruesome Stratagem: One Is The Daring Of Thought (wished-washed To The Lowest Common Denominator), And The Other Is The Individuality, As Well As The Responsibility, Of Editors (those Seeking Shelter Behind The Anonymity Of "peers", But In Fact Dissolved In It, In Many Cases Without A Trace).
At Certain Times Each Year, We Journalists Do Almost Nothing Except Apply For The Pulitzers And Several Dozen Other Major Prizes. During These Times You Could Walk Right Into Most Newsrooms And Commit A Multiple Axe Murder Naked, And It Wouldn't Get Reported In The Paper Because The Reporters And Editors Would All Be Too Busy Filling Out Prize Applications.
Always Remember That If Editors Were So Damned Smart, They Would Know How To Dress.
I Feel Like I Have More Experience With Publishing Humor Than Pretty Much Any Editor I'm Going To Be Dealing With So Sometimes I'll Get A Little Bit Nuts If I Write Something I Know Is Good A Certain Way, And Some Editor Because Of Some Restriction He Has And Wants To Change It That I Know Is Going To Make It Less Funny That'll Piss Me Off And Then I'm Inclined To Go, "well, Hey I've Been Doing This A Long Time, Maybe You Should..." That Doesn't Happen That Often, But I'm More Likely To Say That Now Than I Would Have Been A Long Time Ago. Because Dammit, I'm Infallible!
If You Look At Any List Of Great Modern Writers Such As Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, And F. Scott Fitzgerald, You'll Notice Two Things About Them: 1. They All Had Editors. 2. They Are All Dead. Thus We Can Draw The Scientific Conclusion That Editors Are Fatal.
Any Writer, I Suppose, Feels That The World Into Which He Was Born Is Nothing Less Than A Conspiracy Against The Cultivation Of His Talent.
