Quotes About Critique

We live in a time that demands a discourse of both critique and possibility, one that recognizes that without an informed citizenry, collective struggle, and viable social movements, democracy will slip out of our reach and we will arrive at a new stage of history marked by the birth of an authoritarianism that not only disdains all vestiges of democracy but is more than willing to relegate it to a distant memory.

As an English production it does not rank high. It might get by at Princeton but certainly not at Harvard.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus (1741), a scurrilous burlesque, written mostly by John Arbuthnot, that poked fun at Grub Street twittishness. He chose this indelicate item because it was a source of interesting words like 'chicanery', 'confidant', 'troglodyte' and 'piazza', and even the distinctly modern-sounding 'skylight'.

Jane Collier's Art of Ingeniously Tormenting (a spoof conduct book published in 1753)

Whatever question there may be of his [Thoreau's] talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one, but it was eminently personal. He was unperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial—he was parochial.

Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique.

Some music really does suck!

What is this bullshit? 97% caffeine free is 97% not my kind of thing.

That's how it's always done with us, all the wrong way round!' the Russian officers and generals said after the battle of Tarutino, just as people speak now, letting it be felt that some fool somewhere does things that way, the wrong way round, but we would not do things that way. But people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking about or are deliberately deceiving themselves.

The art schools... you get young kids doing the most vile and meaningless crap. I think the believe every bit of it.

Never tell the truth about an amateur show.

Springsteen] sort of catarrh-mumbles his ditties in a disgruntled mushmouth like Robbie Robertson on Quaaludes with Dylan barfing down the back of his neck.

I may not be smart enough to debate you point-for-point on this, but I have the feeling about 60% of what you say is crap.

Personally, I think the "Potter" books have too many adverbs and not enough sex.

I don't know if you noticed, but our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking in the mirror at itself.

Dick Cheney...and that's all I've gotta say.

My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own. That's not to say that all religious people are lunatics or idiots. It's anything but that.

Read good books. Read bad books - and figure out why you don't like them. Then don't do it when you write. If you are a science fiction or fantasy writer, going to conventions and attending panels is very useful.

The idea of peer critique, of talking about each other's art - I just found it so useless.

Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.

As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.

Personally, I read reviews because I'm interested by them, but they don't have utility for me.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.