“An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.”

Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they

It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn’t catch the remark because I wasn’t paying attention.

All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.

I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.

Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.

Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.

Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.

Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small one to be sure, but nevertheless a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly.

Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process.

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.

In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.

In every queen there’s a touch of floozy.

Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

I never saw myself as a director. It’s certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.

I think I’m equally as abusive as the editors normally are for the “Letters and Tomatoes” column, which is the fan mail part of MAD Magazine and an ongoing feature.

It’s very much a “Weird Al” themed issue, so I’d like to think that there’s a lot of “Weird Al” flavor throughout but I think it’d be generous really to call me an editor.

A book of poems doesn’t just come out by chance, an editor has to select it, a publisher has to distribute it or you will never see it.

As Christians, we are to be newsboys and not editors of the gospel.

Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.

Even my editor at Melville House, who championed the project form the outset, told me she was surprised by the response. After this, editors began asking my opinion about which Latin American writers ought to be translated.

I was confident that I could find an editor and the readership for a translation