When editors were gods

Norman Cousins on birthing a new magazine

"At the very start it's like any pregnancy. You feel the new life stirring inside you — it's quite exciting. Then you get the morning sickness and the pains in the back when things don't work out right." — Norman Cousins in 1972, reflecting on starting his new magazine World after 30-some years as editor of the Saturday Review.

The writer's audience of one (and guess who)

"Writers, it has been said (I may have been the one who said it), write not for general readers but for editors." — Essayist Joseph Epstein, in his 2024 memoir, "Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life."

American (editing) horror story

"Every author has his or her favorite horror story, usually involving the insertion of mistakes and infelicities that were not in the original. In fact, editing here [in the U.S.] has become rewriting; and rewriting of a very low standard." — the late Christopher Hitchens, writing (unless he was rewritten) in 1985.

The quote appears in the 2011 book "The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism."