A Quote by Robert Christgau

I believe an editor's job is to help a writer sound like himself or herself.

Robert Christgau

Quote Topics

Believe Editor Help Herself Himself I Believe Job Like Sound Writer

Quote Author

Robert Christgau
American - Journalist
Born: April 18, 1942

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

Mario Vargas Llosa

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?'

James Thurber

The writer who can't do his job looks to his editor to do it for him, though he won't dream of sharing his royalties with that editor.

Alfred A. Knopf

Being an editor doesn't make you a better writer - or vice versa. The worst thing any editor can do is be in competition with his writer.

Joseph Kanon

Most written work is a conversation between the editor and the writer, that the writer essentially fulfills in public, and the editor provides the stage for that to happen as well as the prompts.

Alexander Chee

My father was the editor of an agricultural magazine called 'The Southern Planter.' He didn't think of himself as a writer. He was a scientist, an agronomist, but I thought of him as a writer because I'd seen him working at his desk. I just assumed that I was going to do that, that I was going to be a writer.

Tom Wolfe

For the serious mediocre writer convention makes him sound like a lot of other people; for the popular writer it gives him a formula he can exploit; for the serious good writer it releases his experiences or emotions from himself and incorporates them into literature, where they belong.

Northrop Frye

You can't help someone unless she wants to help herself. You can give her a nudge, but if she doesn't want to help herself, no one is going to be able to force her to do anything. I like that "attraction rather than promotion" approach.

Fergie

The writer who is literally an addict, the writer who can't help himself, the writer who HAS to write, can never be anything but an amateur, because the industry requires the professional to put writing on hold not just for a day or two, or a week, but for years.

Helen DeWitt

My job on a film is to be responsible for all the sounds in the movie besides the music. Together with my team, we work on the dialogue, foley, sound effects, and sound design. We work closely with the director and picture editor in the prep period, and then together with them, the sound mixers, and music crew, we collaborate on the final mix of the film.

Per Hallberg

Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.

George Bernard Shaw

Like any parents, mine wanted me to have a secure job with a regular wage and career prospects. And the one job my father knew of, that he'd had experience of himself, was the army, so he could help me in that direction.

James Blunt

To call someone like me a writer-activist suggests that it's not the job of a writer to write about the society in which they live. But it used to be our job.

Arundhati Roy

I think the best thing I could ever teach my daughter is that she's not an object or a trophy, and that she can trust in herself and believe in herself and that you are not your things, and you are not your job.

Josh Homme

I think a lot of people have the idea of an editor being someone who comes in like a dictator, and says, "You can't have that scene." And it never is like that - or perhaps some editors are like that and they're assholes, and they're not good editors. A good editor actually says, "I respect you" and they understand that you have a vision and they're actually trying to help you realize it.