Jonathan Galassi

“The FSG story starts to lose its fairy-tale aura when filthy lucre invades the sacred enclosure, as it did ubiquitously in the every-man-for-himself Reagan era.”

“I can write anywhere that's quiet. I have a study in my apartment, but I often work in the kitchen of a house that we rent in the country.”

“One thing I have noticed is that when you're a younger editor, you're more intense about it. As you go along, you relax a little. More and more, I feel that the book is the author's. You give the author your thoughts, and it's up to him or her to decide what to do.”

“Poetry is really about your mental state or intellectual, and where you are, and you're trying to evoke that, explain it to yourself, whatever, you're trying to dig into it, analyse yourself.”

“What the beautiful-writing writers are most attached to is almost always superfluous.”

“There are courses you can take to learn the mechanics of the business, like the Radcliffe course, but I don't think they teach you how to edit.”

“After college, I went to England and studied for a couple years.”

“There's been a fragmentation of how the market functions, but I believe printed books are here to stay. People like the tactile experience, the smell of them; there's a great romance to them.”

“The price of an e-book is a lot less than the price that we're charging for a hardcover book. It's about the same as we charge for a paperback. And that means a different revenue stream.”

“Eugenio Montale - born in Genoa in 1896, died in Milan, 1981 - is one of the twentieth-century Europeans who has spoken most meaningfully to American and British poets.”

“Be patient, work hard and consistently, have faith in your writing, and don't be afraid to listen to constructive criticism.”

“The thing that happened with the music business, there are no stores anymore where you can buy music. It's all an online business now, and that's, you know - the bookstore culture is a very vibrant part of the American experience that we're very reluctant to see go away.”

“There's an old saw about journalism that the more you know about a subject, the less sense reporting about it makes.”

“If you've worked in a company for a long time, there's a mythology that you know by heart, you don't need to look it up to evoke. It's there in your blood, as it were.”

“Elizabeth Bishop in particular had a big impact on me personally as well as artistically. Her insistence on clarity is something I rate very highly.”

“A translation needs to read convincingly. There's no limit to what can go into it in terms of background research, feeling, or your own interests in form and history. But what should come out is something that reads as convincing English-language text.”

“Claiming your life for yourself feels like a huge deal until you do it.”

“I never thought I could write fiction.”

“A publisher - and I write as one - does far more than print and sell a book. It selects, nurtures, positions and promotes the writer's work.”

“The only thing you can really say in a poem is what you really, really deeply believe.”