Quotes About Critique

Neil Hamburger writes such cutting jokes.

Literary men now routinely tell their readers about their divorces. One literary man who reviews books wrote, in reviewing a study of Ruskin, that he had never read a book by Ruskin but that the study confirmed him in his belief that he didn't want to read a book by Ruskin. This man very often writes about his family life.

I think myself I ought to be shot for writing such nonsense... But it's unquestionably good escapist literature, and I think I should rather like it if I were sitting in an air-raid shelter or recovering from flu.

I have no use for the kind of God who goes walking in his garden with a stick, sends his friends to live in the bellies of whales, gives up the ghost with a groan and then comes back to life three days later!

I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them.

Ah ! ce qui manque à la société moderne, ce n'est pas un Christ, ni un Washington, ni un Socrate, ni un Voltaire même ; c'est un Aristophane, mais il serait lapidé par le public

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.

the spectacle is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life with appearances. But a critique that grasps the spectacle's essential character reveals it to be a visible negation of life — a negation that has taken on a visible form.

On ne peut opposer absraitement le spectacle et l'activité sociale effective.

an editor who is a mentor, advisor, and psychiatrist. Don't kid yourself—a good editor will make your book better.

When telescopes work, everyone is an astronomer, and the world is full of stars. When they don't, everyone whips out their microscopes, and the world is full of flaws. The reality is that you need both microscopes and telescopes to achieve success.

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.

The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer.

Frankness and courage are luxuries confined to the more comic varieties of runners-up at national conventions. Thus it is pleasant to remember Cleveland, and to speak of him from time to time. He was the last of the Romans. If pedagogy were anything save the puerile racket that it is he would loom large in the schoolbooks. As it is, he is subordinated to Lincoln, Roosevelt I and Wilson. This is one of the things that are the matter with the United States.

Last week, for the first time, I read Herman Melville's ''Moby Dick.'' It really amazed me by its badness.

the customary academic suspicion of anything that is not guaranteed to be mediocre need have been involved.

an ugly hatchet man who considered Kmart velour sweatpants haute couture.

Artists are not cheerleaders, and we're not the heads of tourism boards. We expose and discuss what is problematic, what is contradictory, what is hurtful and what is silenced in the culture we're in.

I started writing short stories. I tried writing horror, mystery, science fiction. I joined a little critique group here in town and ran my stories past them. After about three years, I tackled my first novel, Subterranean. It took me 11 months to write.

My favorite bad thing about 'Three Billboards' is its ambition to play around with America's ideological and geographical toys.

I really didn't like 'Done With Mirrors.' I really didn't like 'Just Push Play.' Then there are other records I really think were good for their time, like 'Toys and Rocks.'

If someone doesn't like Saudi Arabia's human rights record, that doesn't mean that you are in any way attacking Muslims. You're attacking a government's policies and track record.

I don't tend to have a favorite album; I tend to have favorite tracks. There are flaws in every album that spoil it for me.

A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.