Very few editors worry about heresy - their goals are much too commercial, thank goodness.

Storylines are how characters create the plots involved in their stories.

If they aren't real enough to surprise me, then they aren't real enough to go on the page.

I ride horseback - arthritic knees permitting - or listen to opera. Sometimes I cook. I used to do needlework, but it's hard on my hands now, so I only do it occasionally, but I like it. And, of course, I read.

I'm not a good collaborator in general.

I outline fairly extensively because I'm usually dealing with real events. I don't need to give myself as much information as I used to, but I still like to have two pages of outline for every projected 100 pages of manuscript.

Isn't that an odd philosophy for a vampire?

Common folk didn't have last names in the 8th and 9th centuries.

Very few editors worry about heresy - their goals are much too commercial, thank goodness.

Providing a writer isn't put off by conventions - and some are - attending them can be a nice break from the necessary isolation of writing.

I think it is probably more important to attend specialized conventions for a journeyman writer than any other, but it's useful at all stages of a career, if for nothing else, to find out how the industry is working at any given time.

When you're a mid-list writer, it pays to write fast.

Honestly, I expected to get a cold reception because of my subject matter. But when editors took a look at the story I had to tell, and saw that this was not a parochial story at all, they really warmed to it.

I think that they had afforded me many opportunities to do good work there, and I think I did. It was a wonderful four years. I really worked with some great people, terrific producers, terrific editors.

So I went out and bought myself a copy of the Writer and Artist Yearbook, bought lots of magazines and got on the phone and talked to editors about ideas for stories. Pretty soon I found myself hired to do interviews and articles and went off and did them.

If it were not for the fact that editors have become so timorous in these politically correct times, I would probably have a greater readership than I have.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

I try to help people become the best possible editors of their own work, to help them become conscious of the things they do well, of the things they need to look at again, of the wells of material they have not even begun to dip their buckets into.

There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book.

Writers would submit scripts to me, and if I liked one well enough to submit to magazine editors, I had the know-how whether the story was good or bad.

I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.

If there had been three public editors before me, the body might have absorbed it a little bit better.

The Bush administration works closely with a network of rapid response digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops.'

Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are willing to read whatever the tide washes up at their feet.

The first version of The Beautiful Room Is Empty was the first mss. I'd ever submitted to New York editors.

And I remember that the editors wanted to have a witness to say that this was really the case, because it was a very sharp picture of the just the face, the head of the fetus inside the womb.

The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all "bottom line" editors; everything depends on the money.

You're at the mercy of the editors' hands.

Not that I've always loved the movie when they finally come out, or if they ever come out-because many of them don't come out-but I've gotten to work with really good story editors and stuff like that.

There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors.

I've had editors over the years who couldn't find a clue if it was stapled to their butt.

Successful model? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the third person as though you were merely a piece of merchandise.

One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception - at least some of the time, incompetent or crazy.

There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it's wonderful.

William Packard surely must be one of the great editors of our time.

I had a hard time publishing my books in the beginning of my career, because editors were afraid what people would think of THEM, personally, if their name was associated with me.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we."

Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they're lazy and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.

Look, obviously that was - created quite a firestorm, but Newsweek editors have made clear that this was a situation where, you know, a solid, well-placed source provided some information.

I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery.

The nature of journalism has been the enemy of idealism and the source of cynicism among American reporters and editors throughout our history.

I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.

I don't know how the editors are going to take it or how it may be received. But to some extent I'm hoping that with the next book, when people pick it up and read it, it will scare the pants off of them.

That's why editors and publishers will never be obsolete: a reader wants someone with taste and authority to point them in the direction of the good stuff, and to keep the awful stuff away from their door.

I guess if one set of my books was selling like Stephen King's, and the other wasn't selling at all, editors would want me to do the ones that sold like Stephen King's. But they seem to be willing to let me pick what I want to do next.

There won't be editors in the future with the Internet world, with citizen reporting. That doesn't scare me.

I think editors have to come out of a certain kind of community.

I think on civilian casualties they could do more. It's actually something I've discussed with the editors involved. They're aware of it, and I'm hopeful that there will be more reporting on that.

The publisher has told - you know, if these editors, Andres Martinez and Nick Goldberg, were the least bit honest about this, they would tell you the publisher has told them he wants the editorial page to be conservative.