20th-century Editor Quotes

You see, time is an ocean, not a garden hose. Space is a puff of smoke, a wisp of cloud.

David Wong (writer)

I happen to be a kind of word whore. I will read anything from Racine to a nurse romance, if it's a good nurse romance.

Robert Gottlieb

The balance and peace we seek for ourselves and our society won't be achieved through mental effort alone. Mind and spirit are meant to travel together, with spirit leading the way. Until we make a conscious commitment to understand and embrace our spiritual nature, we will endure the ache of living without the awareness and guidance of the most essential part of ourselves.

Susan L. Taylor

In the days when we could take it for granted that journalism mattered, we could only share assumptions about what it was, how it was delivered and funded, but this is not the case any more.

Alan Rusbridger

There are true unseen forces, but not nearly so many as we believe, nor would they rule us so sternly if we did not admit them to our souls. We would not be assailed half so often by devils, had we not taken the trouble to invent so many of them.

Robert Silverberg

And in most highly academic environments in the United States, no one fails anything.

Running has thrown me into adventures that I would otherwise have missed.

Benjamin Cheever

In general, 'the market' is smarter than the smartest of its individual participants.

Robert L. Bartley

In a dynamic, decentralized system of individual choice and responsibility, people do not have to trust any authority but their own.

Virginia Postrel

But from outside there is no knowing which is true. From outside, there is a five-tenths chance that the cat's alive. But a cat can't be five-tenths alive.

This, at last, was where things were as they ought to be. Everything was in its place -- the tree, the earth underneath, the rock, the moss. In autumn, it would be right; in winter under the snow, it would be perfect in its wintriness. Spring would come again and miracle within miracle would unfold, each at its special pace, some things having died off, some sprouting in their first spring, but all of equal and utter rightness.

How often do we use other people as screens upon which to project our obsessions? Our discontents, dreams, desires, and fears? Well, I always thought, often enough that its a wonder the whole waking world isn't simply viewed as an endless improvised film. One with as many screenwriters, producers, and directors as there are actors

Bradford Morrow

Man studied birds for centuries, trying to learn how to make a machine to fly like them. He never did do the trick; his final success came when he broke away entirely and tried new methods.

John W. Campbell

Canadian is both harder and easier to explain. Nobody knows what it is even supposed to be, let far-out-alone what it actually is.

Quotations have always been supremely effective rhetorical devices, instruments of one-upmanship, ways of supporting any position under the sun with borrowed or stolen authority.

Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.

Donald Barthelme

Ask creative people where they get their ideas, and they will roll their eyes. It's the most common question, but it's also a bad one because the answer is inevitably disappointing. From the inside, creativity seems like an arduous task, often involving plebeian, imperfect choices, driven less by inspiration than by deadline.

Gene Weingarten

Is there any excitement to compare with the opening of a fresh parcel of books?

Mystery is a resource, like coal or gold, and its preservation is a fine thing.

Tim Cahill (writer)

A romantic relationship might very well have been initiated by God, but the moment our focus moves from our Prince to a human love story is the moment we cease to guard our sanctuary, and our entire foundation for success crumbles into ashes. A relationship that leads us closer to our Prince and carefully protects our inner sanctuary is the key to discovering romance as it was truly intended to be...a little taste of heaven on earth.

Looking effortless takes a lot of effort. When I get new Converse I dedicate some time at home to shoving mud on them so they don't look squeaky clean.

To be afraid and to be brave is the best kind of courage of all.

Alice Dalgliesh

The mind revels in conjecture. Where information is lacking, it will gladly fill in the gaps.

One-day cricket has debased the currency, both of great finishes and of adjectives to describe them.