Robert Gottlieb(1931-2023)

American writer & editor.

[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.