Editing

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.
-- H.G. Wells

A good many young writers make the mistake of including a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. The is too much of a temptation to the editor.
-- Ring Lardner

Most editors are failed writers--but so are most writers.
-- T. S. Eliot, from R Giroux's The Education of an Editor

As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out.
-- Mark Twain

An editor... comes down from the mountain after the battle and shoots the wounded.
-- Unknown (writer?)

Substitute damn every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
-- Mark Twain

The first draft of anything is shit.
-- Ernest Hemingway

Writers must rely more on the feel of a sentence than on the dictates of a rule book.
-- James J. Kilpatrick, "The Writers Art"

There is no urge so great as for one man to edit another man's work.
-- Mark Twain

Learning the value of silence is learning to listen to, instead of screaming at, reality: opening your mind enough to find what the end of someone else's sentence sounds like, or listening to a dog until you discover what is needed instead of imposing yourself in the name of training.
-- Brother Thomas Dobush, The Art of Raising a Puppy

I write a lot-- every day, seven days a week-- and I throw a lot away. Sometimes I think I write to throw away; it's a process of distillation.
-- Donald Barthelme

An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
-- Orlando A. Battista

Editing is the same as quarreling with writers--same thing exactly.
-- Harold Ross