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

You make your mark by being true to who you are and letting that be your staple.

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.

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

Without editors planning assignments and copy editors fixing mistakes, reporters quickly deteriorate into underwear guys writing blogs from their den.

I became a connoisseur of that nasty thud a manuscript makes when it comes through the letter box.

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

The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.

An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.

You can almost judge how screwed up somebody is by the kind of toilet paper they use. Go in any rich house and it's some weird coloured embossed stuff.