A Quote by Zia Haider Rahman

My own disposition is to trust the reader. Of course, there's a line between trusting the reader and expecting her to read your mind. That's where a friend or an editor comes in. A great editor will tell you straight when you've drifted into the latter territory.

Zia Haider Rahman

Quote Topics

Between Course Disposition Editor Expecting Friend Great Her Latter Line Mind My Own Own Read Reader Straight Tell Territory Trust Trusting Will Your

Quote Author

Zia Haider Rahman
British - Novelist

It's great to create a story and then to submit it to your editor and see what her reaction is to it. It's great to have your editor tell what her suggestions and ideas for the story are. It's great to explain to your editor why her ideas and suggestions are bizarre and to ask her why is she trying to ruin my story.

Christopher Paul Curtis

Which editor? I can't think of one editor I worked with as an editor. The various companies did have editors but we always acted as our own editor, so the question has no answer.

Joe Simon

Editing is simply the application of the common sense of any good reader. That's why, to be an editor, you have to be a reader. It's the number one qualification.

Robert Gottlieb

How often I have tried to tell writing students that the first thing a writer must do is love the reader and wish the reader well. The writer must trust the reader to be at least as intelligent as he is. Only in such well wishing and trust, only when the writer feels he is writing a letter to a good friend, only then will the magic happen.

Ellen Gilchrist

I always warn aspiring reporters to observe three basic rules: 1. Never trust an editor. 2. Never trust an editor. 3. Never trust an editor.

Edna Buchanan

I was really the first-line editor of the 'House of Night' series. I didn't write that much of the story, and I didn't know what was happening until my mom finished the book and sent it to me because I wanted to read it with fresh eyes as a general reader would.

Kristin Cast

The first duty of an editor is to gauge the sentiment of his reader, and then to tell them what they like to believe.

Thorstein Veblen

I wrote a query letter to an editor - a friend of a friend. The editor called me an idiot, told me never to contact an editor directly, and then recommended three literary agents he had worked with before. Laurie Fox was one of them, and I've never looked back.

Daniel H. Wilson

I try to be a lot of things for the authors I work with - a careful reader, a helpful friend who also happens to be an experienced writer, a thoughtful editor, and a creative midwife.

Kevin Sampsell

If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.

Mortimer Adler

I write with the idea that nobody will care about what I've written; I publish with the idea that nobody will care either. Which is why every time somebody cares enough to read a novel of mine, or respond to it - a reader, a reviewer, even my own editor - I'm a little bit amazed, and so hugely grateful.

Lauren Grodstein

We must be forewarned that only rarely does a text easily lend itself to the reader's curiosity... the reading of a text is a transaction between the reader and the text, which mediates the encounter between the reader and writer. It is a composition between the reader and the writer in which the reader "rewrites" the text making a determined effort not to betray the author's spirit.

Paulo Freire

An editor is like a professional reader, and as I became a better reader, I also became a better writer.

Karen Thompson Walker

Before you can become a writer, you have to be a reader, and a reader of everything, at that. To the best of my recollection, I became a reader at the age of 10 and have never stopped. Like many authors, I read all sorts of books all the time, and it is amazing how the mind fills up.