249 Quotes About Editing

Any book without a mistake in it has had too much money spent on it.

... The Book is more important than your plans for it. You have to go with what works for The Book ~ if your ideas appear hollow or forced when they are put on paper, chop them, erase them, pulverise them and start again. Don't whine when things are not going your way, because they are going the right way for The Book, which is more important. The show must go on, and so must The Book.

While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism.

A book that is made up of only great sentences is not necessarily a great book.

Making love to me is amazing. Wait, I meant: making love, to me, is amazing. The absence of two little commas nearly transformed me into a sex god.


You can edit what you write. Why not edit what you say? If it hurts somebody, you can still offer an apology or withdraw your statements

The reading population of Arizona is small, and the expense of publication great. It is not, therefore, with very bright prospects of pecuniary return that we begin our labors. --Edward E. Cross, "The Weekly Arizonian," March 3, 1859

By far, the hardest part regarding a work of art, apart from the start, is knowing precisely when to stop...It's growing up, finding that most glowing and top spot, ascending to where its highest peak is reached...before descending for the deepest, darkest drop.

Good writing is both what one does and does not say.