Quotes on Editing

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

You never know what you do that could be totally out of left field, which actually might work and give something fresh to the whole scene, to the character, whatever. If you have that with a director who then knows how to shape it, either in the direction, in the moment, or in the editing, then that's good.

Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

As a loyal believer in the Auteur Theory I first felt editing was but the logical consequence of the way in which one shoots. But, what I learned is that it is actually another writing.

George Lazenby is no one's favorite James Bond, but for me the anonymity at the center of this lavish production only serves to reveal the Bond machine firing on all cylinders: superb editing and photography, incredible score, great setpieces. The most romantic in the series, and it actually has, of all things, a tragic ending.

Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does.

Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator.

Editing while you're writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.

Modern biblical scholars have established that the bible is a wiki. It was compiled over half a millennium from writers with different styles, dialects, character names, and conceptions of God and was subjected to haphazard editing that left it with many contradictions, duplications and non-sequiturs.

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.

One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader.

For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.

The essence of cinema is editing.

In a way, editing is not unlike the movies. The best books, just like the best movies, are a collaboration. They're only as good as the compromise made between the artists involved.

I love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.

Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

The chief virtue that language can have is clarity.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none.