Quotes about Editing
I took a part-time editing job to pay the rent. It was work I could do at home, but when suddenly I was expected to spend two days a week in the office, I quit, bought an ice cream cone, and walked the sunny streets of Manhattan.
— Gloria Steinem
There is no urge so great as for one man to edit another man's work.
— Mark Twain
Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.
— Joseph Heller
I write a chapter, then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. I don't think we mine creativity from within. It's bestowed from on high, from God.
— Ann Voskamp
Bad grammar makes me [sic].
— Anonymous
An old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
— Samuel Johnson
Great writers know what to cut out. It's the same in life. Clear ambitions. Clear relationships. This is the stuff of good story.
— Donald Miller
Not that the story need to be long, but it will take a long time to shorten it.
— Henry David Thoreau
Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short." [ Letter to Harrison Blake ; November 16, 1857]
— Henry David Thoreau
Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
— Samuel Johnson
You know you're writing well when you're throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.
— Ernest Hemingway