Jonathan Galassi

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.

Editing is more by-the-hip. You look at a text and ask yourself how it can be improved.

A lot of great authors are published before their time. That's not wrong; it's just the way it works.

When I write that I've known about something for a long time, that's not a boast. That's a confession. It's me acknowledging that I have withheld something important from the public.

It took me realizing that a broken heart has never actually killed anyone to find the courage to ask for what I want, in just about every situation. That was part of my own growing up.

Shaft was a pop culture figure along t he lines of, I guess, Dirty Harry - except that he wasn't as much of a racist. So yeah, I was always a fan.