Quotes About Editing

When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it should be rejected.

Finish the book. Finish the book, regardless of how bad it is. You can make it better in a rewrite.

Kill your darlings, die alone.

Bad grammar makes me [sic].

I just wish my mouth had a backspace key.

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.

Their proof-reader tried to kill herself. She shot herself with a gun.

Five people read my work before its ready for publication, and I solicit opinions from all of them: my wife, my agent, my editor, and my parents.

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.

We sometimes allow writers to publish their work without editing on io9.

I often get asked how I write so much. As any writer knows, the answer is to write a lot more than you actually publish.

If any sort of error is inexcusable, it's an incorrect phone number. One of the cardinal rules of copy editing is that every phone number published must be checked.

I read my books aloud before they were published.

Every book has mistakes in them, every one. There's never been a book published without mistakes.

My first book was published without any editorial advice. Nobody said, 'You might do this or that,' or 'Why don't we see more of this.' I merely took the book and published it.

In a world where everyone is a publisher, no one is an editor. And that is the danger that we face today.

A publisher - and I write as one - does far more than print and sell a book. It selects, nurtures, positions and promotes the writer's work.

I graduated with an English degree and worked for awhile in academic publishing.

There's a lot more to publishing a book than writing it and slapping a cover on it.

I worked in publishing before I became an author, so I knew how a book gets made.

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

And if you want to know why great editors scare the pants off of writers everywhere, read 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss. The punctuation police are everywhere!