Home > Work > Another Life: A Memoir of Other People
1 " Writers are always outsiders and probably ought to be, since only outsiders see things clearly: the people who publish them, or make movies, or produce plays are always richer and more powerful, however successful the writer is. "
― Michael Korda , Another Life: A Memoir of Other People
2 " Almost the first thing I learned about being an editor was that it was hard work. To be sure, ditchdiggers and miners have it worse, but for sheer, numbing, endless (I do not, deliberately, say mindless) work, editing books is hard to beat. "
3 " It was soul-destroying work, apt to turn anyone cynical, for the sad, awful truth was that there was hardly any evidence at all of talent in the slush pile and plenty of proof, for those who needed it, that the country was full of crazy people armed with typewriters—far more of them even than of crazy people armed with guns. "
4 " And like all the better professions, editing is something of an art, too, if it’s done well, and something of a mystery as well. Nobody teaches it, of course; you’re born to it, the way a good surgeon is born with the right hands; it’s something you either can or can’t do, though apprenticeship doesn’t hurt. "