Quotes About Critique

Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.

In 1939, Orwell wrote a long essay titled 'Inside the Whale,' about modernism, the nineteen-thirties, Henry Miller, and 'Tropic of Cancer.'

What if Shakespeare had had a test audience for Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet?

One of the many things I hate about Donald Trump is that he embodies a kind of very popular popular culture that, as near as I'm able to perceive and stomach, is of no quality whatsoever.

People review my comic books. People review every article I write - 'The Atlantic' even publishes them. A great deal of the critique of 'Between the World and Me' was from a feminist perspective. bell hooks pushed back, among others. Some of that has value. Some of it does not. I try my best to separate the wheat from the chaff.

When in doubt, mock the powerful, not the powerless.

Whenever a critic mentions the salary of an actor, I'm thinking, He's not talking about the movie.

Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

It's easy to become very self-critical when you're an actor. Then you get critiqued by the critics. Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

I always thought Jon Stewart was an extremely good surgeon with his scalpel. He would have Republicans on who, I guess, were unclear about what Stewart was up to, and while Jon Stewart was being nice, he was building a case for drowning them.

I don't like to sit around whining about the corporate media, how they control everything, own everything. We already know that.

'Big Brother,' I can't believe people watch. It's just people whispering to each other for hours and then some silly challenge like, who can pull the most stones out of a stuffed alligator, with some product tie-in.

I suffer the mortification of seeing myself attacked right and left by people at home professing patriotism and love of country who never heard the whistle of a hostile bullet. I pity them and the nation dependent on such for its existence. I am thankful, however that, though such people make a great noise, the masses are not like them.

I saw 'Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs' when it came out, didn't like it too much. I found she was stupid.

If Bush does make it to the White House, he and Laura should have Ken Starr over for dinner.

The kind of support encouraged by such modes of expression has always arisen basically from confusing the fatherland itself with the social conditions which happened to prevail in it.

By going to a preview, a director becomes insidiously infected by the process, so by the end of it, you're thinking, 'It may be a bit too long.'

Marlene Dumas is one of the two or three most successful female artists alive, if you judge by prices. I've never reviewed her work, because I find nothing in it to get excited about no matter how hard I look.

Primarily I'm a social commentator rather than someone who's out to get the belly laugh.

It's true that none of my characters are admirable. But maybe I'm primarily a satirist, and a satirist needs to hold up what's not admirable.

I taught at Princeton for 39 years, and the school of architecture on the campus is the worst building on the campus.

Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.

I'm not sure that the culture of literary prizes is always a good thing, but while there are literary prizes, it's nice to be nominated.

I have a big problem with people who glamorize dumbness and demonize education and intellect. And I'm giving a pretty good description of Sarah Palin right now.