William H. Gass Quotes

I feel like I have more experience with publishing humor than pretty much any editor I'm going to be dealing with so sometimes I'll get a little bit nuts if I write something I know is good a certain way, and some editor because of some restriction he has and wants to change it that I know is going to make it less funny that'll piss me off and then I'm inclined to go, "Well, hey I've been doing this a long time, maybe you should..." That doesn't happen that often, but I'm more likely to say that now than I would have been a long time ago. Because dammit, I'm infallible!

You get so used to a world that you complain, but never actually want anything different. Why crave the unfamiliar?

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, 'How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?' and avoid 'How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?'

Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome.

There's never any humongous next draft. I know a writer who every time he finished a novel - you would know his name very well - but his editor would come and live with him for a month. And they would go through the manuscript together.

I used to give her [my wife] to read the column every week before I sent it to the editors. And sometimes she was so mad - are you crazy? You're not going to send that, or, you're not going to write that about me. So I would go, OK. You have five hours. Go ahead, write the column yourself.

No one likes change but babies in diapers.

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.

I have a resistance to change in things that I feel comfortable with and that I'm used to.

Everybody believes in innovation until they see it. Then they think, 'Oh, no; that'll never work. It's too different.'

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

As much as people say they love change, they love it when you change - not when you want them to change. Even when it comes to processes they don't like, they're afraid of change.

I think that human nature is scared of change and justifies it in all sort of ways.

I realised how much the system did not want to change.

No one likes a change of coach.

You get used to a certain thing, and you don't want to change. Because that's what's worked for you.

I have never had any problems with editors who wanted me to change my methods or point of view. I pay a lot of attention to editors, but in a different way. They sometimes catch mistakes and help with the order of poems in a book. I do not underestimate them! Indeed, I have been one myself.

The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.

I come out of journalism, and then book writing. There, it's just you and your editor and maybe a copy desk, looking over your editor's shoulder, and that's the story. It's right there. I can show it to you because it's on paper.

I love my editor, but that would be the definition of hell to me to live with someone and have them go page by page through my manuscript. That I want to avoid at all costs.

When it is my editor telling me how to rewrite a story, I listen and do what she asks because I have learned that I get a better book in the end. I can't say I'm happy when I read that editorial letter. It is always a little painful and scary. But I have learned that - bit by bit - I can make the changes and do the work.

With the possible exception of God during the writing of the Bible, every writer in history has needed an editor. So do you.

I take editing seriously. It's a joy to edit. I always hand a manuscript to several editors and can't wait to get back their notes and see what they've said. I don't criticize myself for making blunders here and there, because it's just natural. You write in chunks, and you may not remember that that sentence you wrote yesterday had the same word repeated three times. I do enjoy that. I love the feeling of repairing. Repairing is really nice.

At the beginning of anything out of the ordinary, the mass of the people always dislike it.