20th-century Editor Quotes

Rupert Murdoch
Anna Wintour
Robert Silverberg
Frederik Pohl
Donald Barthelme
John W. Campbell
Margaret Wise Brown

Above the warehouse and beneath the stars The poets creep on the harp of the Bridge. But see, They fall into the National Cold Storage Company One by one. The wind off the river is too cold, Or the times too rough, or the Bridge Is not a harp at all. Or maybe A monstrous birth inside the warehouse Must be fed by everything—ships, poems, Stars, all the years of our lives.

Kids take up all available time - it's the basic law of parenthood. No matter how much time you give them, whether you work from eight to eight or are around the house all the time, you'll still feel you haven't been there enough for them.

For most men, a stepford wife would bore them to tears after a couple of weeks

Na'ima B. Robert
Na'ima B. Robert
Training for a marathon is much like climbing a ladder. Each ring is a short-term goal that must be met in sequence in order to reach the long-term goal at the top of the ladder.

What is a bore? The answer will vary depending on whether one is at a cocktail party... or the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.

I think you learn about yourself through experiences - as many of them as you can manage.

Bonnie Fuller
Bonnie Fuller
I find it easy to spot a depressive. The illness is scrawled across them like graffiti.

Sally Brampton
Sally Brampton
What strained and anxious lives dogs must lead, so emotionally involved in the world of men, whose affections they strive endlessly to secure, whose authority they are expected unquestioningly to obey, and whose minds they can never do more than imperfectly reach and comprehend.

J. R. Ackerley
J. R. Ackerley
Of all musical instruments the human voice is the most beautiful, for it is made by God.

Shusha Guppy
Shusha Guppy
If you look at any great fashion photograph out of context, it will tell you just as much about what's going on in the world as a headline in The New York Times.

Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour
Emotion combined with an artist's discipline is the rarest thing in the world.

Never be embarrassed by the things you cannot do. Be embarrassed by the things you can do and don't do well.

I long for the day when a new generation of Anita Roddicks can address the AGM in a bright pink dress and strappy sandals.

I do not know the answer to this question, but I think we should be told.

If cooking becomes an art form rather than a means of providing a reasonable diet, then something is clearly wrong.

Supreme egotism and utter seriousness are necessary for the greatest accomplishment, and these the Irish find hard to sustain; at some point, the instinct to see life in a comic light becomes irresistible, and ambition falls before it

You are a mystery in an enigma in a big ball of fur,
An irresistible magnet to every child and flea and burr.
Your nose is high-resolution while I live in a near-scentless fog
You run at high speed, while I just have to slog (but it's a good ol' slog)
So I just want to thank you for being my dog....

Richard Summerbell
Richard Summerbell
I will not coat my words in lumps of sugar
I will serve them to our people with the bitter quinine.

In an age of specialization people are proud to be able to do one thing well, but if that is all they know about, they are missing out on much else life has to offer.

My own personal theory is that this is the very dawn of the world. We're hardly more than an eyeblink away from the fall of Troy, and scarcely an interglaciation removed from the Altamira cave painters. We live in extremely interesting ancient times.
I like this idea. It encourages us to be earnest and ingenious and brave, as befits ancestral peoples; but keeps us from deciding that because we don't know all the answers, they must be unknowable and thus unprofitable to pursue.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Anybody seen in a bus over the age of thirty has been a failure in life.

A city of strivers pushing forward from immigrant enclaves.

No demon or mortal has ever challenged the second law of thermodynamics and won.

The holiness of love inspired ordinary men and women to act like angels. It lifted them on wings closer to God.

Envy is as persistent as memory, as intractable as a head cold.