“Beware, too, of thinking that your skills can make the book something it is not. If you wish to be a writer, be one. Never tell an author that you can somehow inspirit a book with qualities and essences that will somehow transform it. Be careful to keep a clear idea of your role; you are not the expert, not the creator. You are there to assist.”

– from “Doing Good— and Doing It Right: The Ethical and Moral Dimension of Editing” by James O’Shea Wade, in Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do, Third Revised Edition, edited by Gerald Gross.