When you're editing, you want to be the perfect appreciator, not another writer.

You know the sultans used to light their garden parties with turtles? They'd put candles on their backs and let them wander around. Hundreds of them.

I think most writers' houses are disappointing. What's much more atmospheric and interesting are the places they wrote about.

When you're editing, you want to be the perfect appreciator, not another writer.

At graduation, I assumed I'd be in publishing, but first I went to England and got a master's degree in English Literature. And then I came back to New York and had a series of publishing jobs, the way one does.

Being an editor doesn't make you a better writer - or vice versa. The worst thing any editor can do is be in competition with his writer.