- [on his years of editing the writer, Toni Morrison] Our only clashes have been about commas, because I like commas, and Toni doesn't... And it's because Toni... hears her prose. So that, when she's writing she hears what she's writing. I believe that she hears the pauses that commas suggest to a reader. But the reader isn't hearing her speak it, so we don't know where those pauses are, without those vital, adorable little commas.
- I was editing [writer] Len Deighton...who couldn't be more eager for suggestions...[yet is] one of those writers for whom, once a sentence is down on paper, it takes on a reality that no amount of good will or effort can change. So you can say to him,...'On page 37 this character is killed but on page 118 [he's] at a party'...Len says, 'This is terrible...I'll fix it...' Then you get the manuscript back,...turn to page 37, and he'll have changed it to, 'He was *almost* killed'.
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