Quotes About Critique

we do our friends no favors by pretending not to notice flaws in their work, especially when those who are not their friends are bound to notice these same flaws.

As manuals for contemplative understanding, the Bible and the Koran are worse than useless. Whatever wisdom can be found in their pages is never best found there, and it is subverted, time and again, by ancient savagery and superstition.

Critiquing Islam, critiquing any idea, is not bigotry. "Islamophobia" is a troubled and inherently unhelpful term. Yes, hatred of Muslims by neo-Nazi-style groups does exist, and it is a form of cultural intolerance, but that must never be conflated with the free-speech right to critique Islam. Islam is, after all, an idea; we cannot expect its merits or demerits to be accepted if we cannot openly debate it.

Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

I don't like Tommy on Broadway at all. I like the music, I'm pleased with Pete's success but I don't like what they've done to it.

Bonaparte chantait presque aussi faux que Louis XV

Steak swallowers zonked on Television!

NOVEL, n. A short story padded

No. Just no. The hairiness, and the lumpiness, and the great big fumbling fingers and … balls. I mean, balls. What's that about? That is one singularly unattractive piece of anatomy. That is just … that is bad design, is what that is

If you didn't have me to rake you over the coals now and then, there wouldn't be any fire in your life at all.

Books are a way of saying: This room seems to have more than its fair share of bozos in it.

It's painful for me to watch someone who isn't funny. It's horrifying to sit in the back and watch some guy who just totally sucks.

The truth is that you are living in a system that is pouring acid on your attention every day, and then you are being told to blame yourself and to fiddle with your own habits while the world's attention burns.

The status quo sucks.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

The function of the novelist... is to comment upon life as he sees it.

My Turn is the distilled bathwater of Mrs. Reagan's life. It is for the most part sweetish, with a tart edge of rebuke, but disappointingly free of dirt or particulate matter of any kind.

It is true that I have known Straussians almost all my life. And the one thing I was taught about them from the earliest age is that they are wrong.

A book is judged, not by its reference to life, but by its reference to other books.

Do not be awed by giant predecessors. Be ill-tempered with their renown. Point out flaws. Frighten interviewers from Time. Appear in Playboy. Sell to the movies.

O escritor americano Philip Roth, falecido neste maio de 2018, insistia que a literatura não é o "concurso de beleza moral" em que hoje se tenta transformá-la a golpes de politicamente correto, inclusão social e análogos.

Hemingway said that the best thing a writer can have is "a built-in shit detector.

When you are giving feedback, try to be descriptive and minimize judgment.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.