Quotes About Abridgment

Not that the story need to be long, but it will take a long time to shorten it

My editor's main job is to cut down my worldbuilding. There's so much fun stuff in there, you know?

They are the abridgments of wisdom.

For most people, I edit. Most people are definitely getting along on the Cliffs Notes.

Some books cannot be summarized; some can be compressed to about ten pages; the majority to zero pages.

There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Be the responsibility on their heads who raise this novel and extraordinary question of reception, going to the unconstitutional abridgment, as I conceive, of the great right of petition inherent in the People of the United States.

A novel is challenging, because you have more story than you need and you have to select and narrow.

You are sure that I would not be well advised to make certain excisions and eliminations? You do not think it would be a good thing to cut, to prune? I might, for example, delete the rather exhaustive excursus into the family life of the early Assyrians?

all the boring rehash of what happened up to this point. That saves me a lot of time and effort.

When books and plays are made into movies, they frequently want to cut out the valleys and just show the peaks.

There is a translation of a Persian book into English, not from Persian, but from a French translation of an Urdu rendering of a classical Persian abridgment of an Arabic original.