On Editing Quotes & Sayings

There is an underlying rhythm to all text. Sentences crashing fall like the waves of the sea, and work unconsciously on the reader. Punctuation is the music of language. As a conductor can influence the experience of the song by manipulating its rhythm, so can punctuation influence the reading experience, bring out the best (or worst) in a text. By controlling the speed of a text, punctuation dictates how it should be read. A delicate world of punctuation lives just beneath the surface of your work, like a world of microorganisms living in a pond. They are missed by the naked eye, but if you use a microscope you will find a exist, and that the pond is, in fact, teeming with life. This book will teach you to become sensitive to this habitat. The more you do, the greater the likelihood of your crafting a finer work in every respect. Conversely the more you turn a blind eye, the greater the likelihood of your creating a cacophonous text and of your being misread. — Noah Lukeman

In front of me 327 pages of the manuscript [Master and Margarita] (about 22 chapters). The most important remains - editing, and it's going to be hard. I will have to pay close attention to details. Maybe even re-write some things ... 'What's its future?' you ask? I don't know. Possibly, you will store the manuscript in one of the drawers, next to my 'killed' plays, and occasionally it will be in your thoughts. Then again, you don't know the future. My own judgement of the book is already made and I think it truly deserves being hidden away in the darkness of some chest.
[Bulgakov from Moscow to his wife on June 15 1938] — Mikhail Bulgakov

A lot of it is found in the editing room and part of that is due to some of the improvisational tactics we employ on set. Part of it is that the shot goes a little bit long and they end up coming down to fit time. — Mark Duplass

(R)eality TV (is) a medium dedicated to the proposition that with the help of judicious editing, carefully chosen half-wits can hold the attention of millions of their fellow half-wits for weeks on end. — Terry Teachout

I've always been a relaxed person on set, but I think the main thing is I think about it from an editing point of view way more than I did before. — Taika Waititi

Sometimes a fresh perspective is all you need to get a second wind on the revision process. Try viewing your material on a different medium; it will shed a new light on the inconsistencies in the dark. — V.S. Watson

I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable. It's not the final thing, it's the first thing, which may just be the suggestive, vague identification of something that you have to come back to and rewrite. — M.H. Abrams

'Under the Skin' is handsome, in a dour way, but inert - a cunning experiment that died in the shooting or on the editing table. You'll want to get the DVD, though, and not just for its study of Scarlett. Odds are that the Making-Of documentary will be far stranger and more fascinating than the movie that was made. — Richard Corliss

When you're doing a TV show, it's not like you just shoot for six weeks and you're in an editing room with all of your footage. It's like a guitar or a car, you have to fine tune things. You stop doing what's not working, you work on what is working and you add things that do work. — Chris Pratt

Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole - so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page. — Willa Cather

Sound and Visual Effects and Editing are sometimes referred to as technical awards. They're not technical awards. They're given for artistic decisions. And sometimes we make them better than others, and I guess we made a couple of good ones on this one. — Randy Thom

Learn to enjoy this tidying process. I don't like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity. I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to strengthen the transition between one sentence and another. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line. With every small refinement I feel that I'm coming nearer to where I would like to arrive, and when I finally get there I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that wont the game. — William Zinsser

Writing is like riding a bike. Once you gain momentum, the hills are easier. Editing, however, requires a motor and some horsepower. — Gina McKnight

Professional humorists and cartoonists have to go through a stage in which they have to kill their own internal editor just so they can get stuff out. So whether they believe it or not, they need me on the other end to do that editing for them. — Robert Mankoff

I hate sitting around and waiting; that's why I always have an editing suite on set. — Til Schweiger

For most people, I edit. Most people are definitely getting along on the Cliffs Notes. — Suzanne Finnamore

Our mental health depends on a mechanism for editing the moment-by-moment ocean of sensory data flowing into our consciousness down to a manageable trickle of the noticed and remembered. The cannabinoid network appears to be part of that mechanism, vigilantly sifting the vast chaff of sense impression from the kernels of perception we need to remember if we're to get through the day and get done what needs to be done.* Much depends on forgetting. — Michael Pollan

I can be a fairly hands-on editor, and when I'm editing someone I feel intensely invested in that writer and her work. I love helping to shape a book, and I feel very privileged to get to do that with writers I'm excited about. I think doing that work for the past six years has changed me, and it better prepared me for the questions and suggestions. — Danielle Dutton

When I started editing on my home computer, I said to myself, 'Well, I could be at home studying for a class or I could be at home editing a video.' — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

The relationship with actor and director is probably closer to theater, in that, when we record the dialogue, there is very little in the way of the creative collaboration - no cameras, lighting or even locations. Then, once we record, the post process is very similar to the post flow in filmmaking - editing, sound design, mixing, etc. At the end of the day, it's all about storytelling and honing in on a tone by developing a rhythm and structure that suits the storytelling. — Glenn McQuaid

The creation of the island, or the impression of the island, as it changes in the mind of the character also came in to play ... there was another very important collaborator, Rob Legato, on special visual effects. And then ultimately there's Thelma Schoonmaker, who keeps me focused during the editing of the picture. — Martin Scorsese

Film, for me, is in two stages. One is when I write the script more or less on my own - that's the nice bit. And then comes for me the unpleasant bit when they all go off, 100 people - actors and camera people and film and sound - and I stay away. When they go into the editing room, I come in again, and that's the bit I like. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

What comes first? The melody, always. It's all about singing the melodies live in my head. They go in circles. I guess I'm quite conservative and romantic about the power of melodies. I try not to record them on my Dictaphone when I first hear them. If I forget all about it and it pops up later on, then I know it's good enough. I let my subconscious do the editing for me. — Bjork

Even if I'd stayed [in the US to finish 'The Magnificent Ambersons'] I would've had to make compromises on the editing, but these would've been mine and not the fruit of confused and often semi-hysterical committees. If I had been there myself I would have found my own solutions and saved the pictures in a form which would have carried the stamp of my own effort. — Orson Welles

With the money from the legal settlement, he hires a beautiful young woman from the local university to type for him as he orally composes the sentences. But soon he realizes she is editing and rewriting what he tells her before she even types it in. And what dawns on him is that she is the better writer. Soon he sits mute in the room while she writes. He only watches. He wants to kill her, strangle her with his hands. But he can't move his hands to do it. He is in hell. — Michael Connelly

I like being a musician that's also a fly on the wall. I like people coming in the room and doing what they do and then leaving. I like attention, but it actually gives me a little less to work with as a performer if people are editing themselves and not being them. — Travis Morrison

I have an amazing team; I have amazing producers; I have amazing writers, but at the end of it, it's me making the decisions on the writing, the tone, the editing. — Ellen DeGeneres

I was asked the age old question today: why are you an author? I suppose there are lots of answers to this question that would suffice, but for me there is really only one answer that will do: the blank paper taunts me, and I am weak. — Richard Due

Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean I'll just say to Jack, "Let's let the next villain be Dr. Doom" ... or I may not even say that. He may tell me. And then he goes home and does it. He's so good at plots, I'm sure he's a thousand times better than I. He just makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing ... I may tell him that he's gone too far in one direction or another. Of course, occasionally I'll give him a plot, but we're practically both the writers on the things. — Stan Lee

Bobby is really the one who did all the editing on that stuff. And he did all the mixing. I particularly like the record we did with Logic because Scott Harding did a great job mixing it. He's really a killing engineer. — Charlie Hunter

Here's one way that we try to actively and immediately bring in kindness in our meetings and camps: we ask our girls to stop before they speak and reevaluate what they're going to say based on this acronym:


True
Honest
Important
Necessary
Kind


Is what they're out to say True? Is it Honest? Is it Important? Necessary Kind?
We ask the to T.H.I.N.K. before they speak text, or type, and try to incorporate it into their daily lives -- especially within their interactions with their friends and classmates -- as much as possible. It's a choice girls can make: Do they want to encourage others with their words, or bring others down?

You might think this won't resonate with your middle school girl, but I promise that it works. It's not about self-editing or asking her not to speak her truth, of course; it's about thinking of others too. — Haley Kilpatrick

I really only became an editor, or started doing my own editing because I was filming the docs and you simply can't keep an editor on for as long as it takes so. — John Hyams

To make a movie charming, you have to be playful on all levels and open to ideas, and you have to have an idea for how to do that within the confines of the shooting schedule and editing and all that. — Lasse Hallstrom

In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices. — Don DeLillo

You really like putting it all on display, don't you? No editing."
"I'm not playing games with you, Sam. I have no intention of hiding what I want; I won't make that mistake again. — Genna Rulon

Editing is such a voyeuristic treat for me. I land on a theme and ask authors to pen works that fit the topic. — Alison Tyler

When you reach the editing stage, it is often the case that you can get too involved with the story to detect errors. You can see words in your head that aren't actually there on the page, sentences blur together and errors escape you, and you follow plot threads and see only the images in your skull. — Neal Asher

You collaborate with actors who are also talented and visionary and come together on a artistic direction within the confines of humanity and realism. The collaboration that you have had with all of these people plays an integral role in its final stage where editing and music are combine to enhance your work. This whole process is very rewarding and I wouldn't trade it for anything. — Ruth E. Carter

Real artists find answers. The knowledge of the artisan is within the confines of his skills. For example, I know a lot about lenses, about the editing room. I know what the different buttons on the camera are for. I know more or less how to use a microphone. I know all that, but that's not real knowledge. Real knowledge is knowing how to live, why we live, things like that. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Editing one's writing is as easy as lighting a match while riding a bicycle. — Fennel Hudson

It's not words, but years we should be editing. Remember: time spent on bad art is a form of redundancy, doing the same thing twice is a form of tautology, and wasting precious moments complaining about life is a form of pleonasm. We should all learn to live our lives concisely. — Anthony Marais

Remember the waterfront shack with the sign FRESH FISH SOLD HERE. Of course it's fresh, we're on the ocean. Of course it's for sale, we're not giving it away. Of course it's here, otherwise the sign would be someplace else. The final sign: FISH. — Peggy Noonan

As the actor, you can't be worried about the scene that you're going to playing two days from now. You think about what's going on, right now and in the moment. That's what you worry about. Everything is right then and there. In the end, all of the pieces come together, thanks to the editing and James Gunn. — Michael Rooker

When you're done shooting, the movie that you're going to release when you're done shooting is as bad as it will ever be. And then through editing, and finishing the effects and adding music, you get to make the movie better again. So I'm really hard on myself and on the movie. — Barry Sonnenfeld

I moved to New York City when I was 20 years old, started making movies non-stop. I didn't have any friends, so I would just sit at home all night editing on my iMac. — Casey Neistat

As the trees turned red, then white, then naked as pitchforks, Margot and Xiao Chen immersed themselves in several forests' worth of pages, and I watched, tortured, as brick after brick of a new development was laid on the wasteland of Midtown West like slabs of gold bullion. — Carolyn Jess-Cooke

Woolf drew on her memories of her holidays in Cornwall for To the Lighthouse, which was conceived in part as an elegy on her parents. Her father was a vigorous walker and an Alpinist of some renown, a member of the Alpine Club and editor of the Alpine Journal from 1868 to 1872; he was the first person to climb the Schreckhorn in the Alps and he wrote on Alpine pleasures in The Playground of Europe (1871). By the time he married Julia Duckworth in 1878, however, a more sedentary Leslie Stephen was the established editor of the Cornhill Magazine, from which he later resigned to take up the editorship of the Dictionary of National Biography in 1882, the year of Woolf 's birth. Stephen laboured on this monumental Victorian enterprise until 1990, editing single-handed the first twenty-six volumes and writing well over 300 biographical entries. He also published numerous volumes of criticism, the most important of which were on eighteenth-century thought and literature. — Jane Goldman

I think that anybody that wants to direct, particularly writers, should spend some time in an editing room, whether it's a film of theirs or someone else's, or shoot their own picture on video and cut it. — Joe Dante

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it. — Alice Englert

I spend a lot of time in preproduction working with authors, and a lot of time in postproduction.: editing, music, all that sort of stuff. Casting. On the set there's not a lot for me to do. — Charlie Kaufman

It's been 50 years since I was on the roof of my parents' house shooting Hag in a Black Leather Jacket when I didn't even know there was such a thing as editing. I thought you just shot the film and showed it. That's exactly what I did. I'm not that different 50 years later. — John Waters

In 'Serena,' stuff happens, then nastier stuff, without ever engaging the viewer's rooting interest or sick fear. Sometimes it's a question of sloppiness on the set or in the editing room. — Richard Corliss

I was the Playmate editor for 'Playboy' for two years. I produced two years' worth of centerfolds. I did everything on that, from picking the girls to designing the sets to picking the wardrobe, coming up with themes, assigning the photographer, down to editing the photos and approving the retouching. — Holly Madison

Ever since 'Strange Heaven,' I haven't really reread my old work. Not so much because I don't like the writer I was, or because I find flaws in the writing, but more because I get so burnt out on a novel once I've finished writing, revising, editing and copy editing it that I genuinely never want to look at it again after it's gone to press. — Lynn Coady

When I'm editing, I tend to cut, go back over it, cut, go back over it, cut, so by the time I'm done, even with a cut, I don't have a rough cut and then work on it so much. I have a pretty rigorous cut of the movie that's usually in the range of what the final movie is going to be. It doesn't mean I don't work on it a lot after that, but I get it into a shape so I feel I can really tell what it needs, or at least it's ready to show people. — Noah Baumbach

When I'm editing, it's such a tough call, and I get challenged on it all the time. You've got to go with your gut - sometimes when you look at a photograph, you just know it's the shot. Sometimes it's about the connection, or about the simplicity of the composition. — Russell James

by the Draft Committee. The present text makes clear exactly what the Council affirmed and denied. Obviously, those who signed the articles do not necessarily concur in every interpretation advocated by the commentary. Not even the members of the Draft Committee are bound by this, and perhaps not even Dr. Sproul, since his text underwent certain editorial revisions. However, this commentary represents an effort at making clear the precise position of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy as a whole.
In the editing process, we strove to take account of the comments that were forwarded to us. In some cases, we could not concur with those who made comments,
and therefore the — R.C. Sproul

With all editing, no matter how sensitive - and I've been very lucky here - I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand. — Michael Morpurgo

I try and shoot as often as a can, I cross shoot. I have at least two cameras rolling at the same time. So I'll have two actors or two sets of actors at a time so everybody's basically on camera. So when they improvise we have everybody's coverage. And you can then go in the editing room and find the energy still stays there. — Denis Leary

I re-mastered 'The Conversation' a few years ago for DVD. 'The Conversation' was the first film I edited on a flatbed machine - a KEM editing machine. I've been using Final Cut or the AVID for 12 years now, so I was interested in looking at this film and seeing if I could tell if it had been edited the old way. Truth be told, I couldn't. — Walter Murch

In editing, it's amazing how you choose the in and out points. What you cut on is everything for creating tension. It's amazing how expanding a shot by five seconds can just ruin the tension. — Sean Durkin

A good deal of editing a manuscript looks like mechanical work, as if anyone with time on their hands and a magnifying glass could do it. But at a certain point, you need a strong interpretive conviction and, as you say, an "intangible" relationship to what you are doing. — Oliver Harris

I don't think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I'm rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listening to probably 20-60 different songs in that time. — Tao Lin

Don't let the case from 1995 fool you. Early Bil Gates Beige is just a color. Many wonders lurk therein."

"Many wonders?"

"A fast-as-hell processor. Shit-tons of memory. A hard drive that could crack nuts. And best of all, for our purposes, some very expensive audio editing software that I did not pay for."

"Ah. And the rest of this stuff--over here on the bookcase?"

"External drives. A CD burner. Extra parts. And that thing on the end that looks like a little hot plate is a mug-warmer my grandmother gave me for Christmas. So that's not part of FrankenHal. — Cherie Priest

Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis's comments on them, and burned them. — A.S. Byatt

I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion revisions, large and small, that go into the writing of a book. — Libba Bray

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague. — William Safire

For me, shooting, editing, and scoring rely on rhythm. — Donnie Yen

'The Conversation' was the first film I edited on a flatbed machine - a KEM editing machine. I've been using Final Cut or the AVID for 12 years now, so I was interested in looking at this film and seeing if I could tell if it had been edited the old way. — Walter Murch

There is a kind of structure for a story that was peculiarly compelling for the radio. I thought I had invented it atom-by-atom sitting in an editing booth in Washington on M Street when I was in my 20s. Then I found out that it is one of the oldest forms of telling a story - it was the structure of a sermon. — Ira Glass

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. — Christopher Nolan

When you're editing the film, you use a temp track. So you're putting music in there for a rough cut to keep track of what's going on. It can be a hindrance if wrong, it can be an enormous asset if you get it right. — Nicholas Jarecki

Remove the comma, replace the comma, remove the comma, replace the comma ... — R.D. Ronald

I spent a fair amount of time editing the lyrics and allowing the song to kind of evolve ... anytime there's anything worthwhile, it certainly 'feels' like it happened on the spur of the moment, but it's a composite of lots of spurs of the moment, hopefully. And over time, you catch up with those, and then you have a full set of lyrics you've thought of and you feel comfortable singing. — Jeff Tweedy

... The Book is more important than your plans for it. You have to go with what works for The Book ~ if your ideas appear hollow or forced when they are put on paper, chop them, erase them, pulverise them and start again. Don't whine when things are not going your way, because they are going the right way for The Book, which is more important. The show must go on, and so must The Book. — E.A. Bucchianeri

You have to know what you're shooting. Don't just make your movie in the editing room and just get everything you can on the day. — Patrick Wilson

When you're editing, you're putting it together in a way that makes sense metaphysically. You're not inventing it, but you're finding the story that's there. You're making a play that's eventually going to go on stage and present itself to an audience. You want to show what happened, not exactly what you have evidence of happening. — D. A. Pennebaker

He presses his forehead down on the podium and I watched his shoulders shake, and then finally, he said, "Goddamn it, Augustus, editing your own eulogy."
"Don't swear in the Literal Heart of Jesus," Gus said. — John Green

One of the first decisions I made, as the director of "Hide and Seek," was that our film would be silent and use underscoring of original music that I was planning on composing. The decision was mostly predicated on knowing how time consuming the editing of dialogue can be and given the various locations we shot in, I didn't want to worry about having to mix room tones in such a short amount of time. — Garth Kravits

On the Web, we can be whoever we wish to be, editing the face we show to others in ways that aren't possible in physical space. We can also fine-tune the complexity and depth of our interactions and relationships. — Walter Kirn

The hunger for knowing is what excites me. I get to geek out about editing, be on set, give notes to writers - I love it all. — Sue Naegle

Preoccupation with style will not produce it. No amount of editing and polishing will have any appreciable effect on the flavor of how a man writes. It is a product of the quality of his emotion and perception; it is the ability to transfer these to paper which makes him a writer, in contrast to the great number of people who have just as good emotions and just as keen perceptions, but cannot come within a googol of miles of putting them on paper. — Raymond Chandler

When you're in the editing room, as a director, you get the opportunity to look at your work. As a writer, you can rewrite. But as an actor, unless you're watching playback, you really rely on the director to help you. — Zoe Kazan

And after you've done the acting, there's a lot of places you can put your input - in the editing, in the production of it, in the rewriting of it and so on. — Paul Reiser

I know when something is done and when it isn't. There's been times working on movies when they [moviemakers] lock in a release date and so you're stuck to that schedule. But sometimes you're still editing and you feel like you're not really done, but they're sort of releasing the movie anyway - that's kind of depressing. — Rob Zombie

We put on a pot of tea, a necessity between these two writing friends. We
could no more imagine writing without this hot sustenance than we could
without pen and paper. We sat at the table to talk shop, sort through our
notes, and make plans for the book. Then we settled down in the sunroom,
giggling a little at the unexpected absurdity of our activity, editing
within arm's reach of each other, like toddlers at parallel play. — Mary Potter Kenyon

I'm a writer, not an editor, and though the editing rarely cut into my writing time, it did take away from that walking-around-thinking-about-it-when-you're-not-thinking-about-it time that I think is important for writers. When you're half-thinking about what you're working on while driving, cooking ... just letting things sift and settle, come to you. — Ben Fountain

Well, Toronto, I consider to be the birthplace of my films. I've made three films and this is the third one to premiere here in the same theater on the same day at the same time - they are my audience. They're the people that I think about while I'm writing, directing, and editing. I specifically make movies for them. — Jason Reitman

My metaphor for acting in movies - not on stage because it's completely different on stage - is to put colors on an easel for the director to paint his own painting with in the editing room, long after I've left. You buy me for red and black, so I better give you really great red and black, but if I can give you purple, pink, green and brown too, I will. — Scott Glenn

And I watch all the dailies and I grade the jokes or the moments, you know, on a scale from ... so I know exactly what we have. And so I can then go into the editing room and be like "I want you to do this moment, this moment, this joke, that joke. I'd like to see 3 versions." — Nicholas Stoller

I love being on stage if I'm not on a set. If I'm at home, I'm usually in my office editing or reconstructing my website or whatever it may be. I just love putting creativity into a performance, so if the right script comes along, and I certainly am reading comedies and dramas now, then I'm ready willing and able to give it a shot. — Dane Cook

Children used to get bullied at school. Now they go home, and that's where the problem starts - because they sit on their phones all night, thinking about who's 'liked' a photo of them, who hates them, who loves them. They don't know what's real and what's not, editing their lives constantly to fit other people's views. — Jessie J.

A film is born in my head and I kill it on paper. It is brought back to life by the actors and then killed in the camera. It is then resurrected into a third and final life in the editing room where the dismembered pieces are assembled into their finished form. — Robert Bresson

Even a fiction film is hard to end. You can going on shooting and editing a documentary forever. — Leos Carax

manuscript
meanuscript
moanuscript
manurescript
and so on — Katerina Stoykova Klemer

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing - 'Oh, let's put that sentence there, let's get rid of this' - have become commonplace in films and music too. — Brian Eno

'Close To The Edge,' we actually had played it from beginning to end before we recorded it in the studio. So we knew how long it was, and we knew it would fit on the album fine, so we didn't do any editing. — Chris Squire

The greatest films ever made in our history were cut on film, and I'm tenaciously hanging on to the process. I just love going into an editing room and smelling the photochemistry and seeing my editor wearing mini-strands of film around his neck. — Steven Spielberg

Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story. — Mary Stuart Masterson

By June 1949 people had begun to realize that it was not so easy to get a program right as had at one time appeared. I well remember when this realization first came on me with full force. The EDSAC was on the top floor of the building and the tape-punching and editing equipment one floor below on a gallery that ran round the room in which the differential analyzer was installed. I was trying to get working my first non-trivial program, which was one for the numerical integration of Airy's differential equation. It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that "hesitating at the angles of stairs" the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs. — Martin Campbell-Kelly