“There are, it seems, two kinds of editors. The first kind cares mainly about himself, about how his editing performance reflects on him and getting ahead or getting stroked or getting to lunch, as the case may be. Such editors are not editors at all … A real editor, however, is a rare thing… A real editor is focused totally on the writer’s work and helping the writer realize a vision of the piece or the book he’s set out to do. Editing requires a certain selflessness that is hard to find.”
-David Remnick, an American journalist and writer, editor of The New Yorker magazine, and 1994 Pulitzer Prize winner for his book, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire.