Editorial Work Quotes

David Burnett was the son of Martha Foley, who edited the Best American Short Stories series. She hired me to work with David and her to read stories for the anthology.

I miss particularly the managing editor role on the 'Evening News.'

[Margot Hentoff] was an editor there for a time as well as a writer.

William Shawn was the editor of The New Yorker and for whom I worked for, God, 27 years; a man I respected enormously because of what he did, - what the magazine was about.

He types his labored column - weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn.

In fact, I spent 25 years as a reporter, swearing I would never become an editor. Sitting at a desk, watching other people go out and find the story, and then fussing with other people's words - I just didn't get the appeal of that.

While I had been, I guess, quite brilliant, academically, in my college years, I also had been editor of the paper, and I loved that. And, that was a much more active thing. And I missed it when I was doing graduate work.

My younger daughter really loves makeup. She's quite good artistically. I could see her going into something possibly behind the camera - whether it's in film or still camera for editorial stuff - but she's very taken with makeup, and she's really quite talented for as young as she is.

As with many teens, my first jobs included babysitting and mopping floors at McDonald's. Since then, I've held jobs a diverse as selling used cars, selling apparel, cosmetics, and real-estate, substitute-teaching six graders, teaching undergraduate creative writing, and working as an editorial assistant for a literary magazine.

My only claim to fame, if I have one, is that I'm an editor.

So I became a publisher by mistake - well, not quite by mistake, because I wanted to be an editor but I had to make sure the magazine would survive. The point is this: Most businesses fail, so if you're going to succeed, it has to be about more than making money.

Teaching regularly has made me an even more adept reader, I think. The kind of teaching I do is more like editing than anything else. The kind of editing book editors used to do before lunch. The kind of editing I used to do as a radio documentary maker.

Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors.

In some Old Testament books, it's very evident that an editor has been at work. That's quite all right. It's part of the process.

I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description

Writing is not chewing your nails and picking your teeth, but a matter of public interest.

I decided to make my living as a magazine writer. And I found that it was really easy and fun.

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.

Procrustes was an editor.

A job on a newspaper is a special thing. Every day you take something that you found out about, and you put it down and in a matter of hours it becomes a product. Not just a product like a can or something. It is a personal product that people, a lot of people, take the time to sit down and read.

Back in the day I was doing runway, editorial, advertising, spokesmodeling, and public appearances. Those are five different categories.

Machines aren't replacing proofreaders at all. Copy editors, who proofread and much, much more, use spellcheck as a tool but read every word that appears in the paper.

I didn't really want deadlines and editorial work. I wanted something mechanical and eight hours a day. So I went to work, thinking it was easy - ha, ha - on the complaint desk at the circulation department.

When I do an editorial or when I do a campaign, I bring that lens to every space.

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