Quotes About Criticism

It is the devious writer indeed who writes in such a way that the critic who finds himself unresponsive to the writer's vision feels like a philistine.

One of the problems with living in a free country was that anyone outside this palace/prison could think and say whatever he wished.

You mean you would have me blow up something just because I didn't approve of it? What do you think I am, a vandal? A fascist? A fucking critic?

They glared at her as if she were a piece of modern art at a county fair. A hostile sneer here, a puzzled laugh there...

Mediocrity is the standard rather than the exception among practicing artists (Sturgeon's rule: 90 percent of everything is shit)

You stupid woman, if rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!

All he did from freshman year through sophomore was react -- sneer, laugh, dismiss, find fault, demean -- a young man's version of critical thinking.

And you look like the north side of a southbound mule.

Criticism as a form of knowledge is capable of robbing literature not only of its own implicit and explicit ideology but of its ideas as well; it can dismiss the difficult, arduous work writers do to make an art that becomes and remains part of and significant within a human landscape.

she was the dumbest bitch on the planet.

Since anti-Communists ran the gamut from Trotskyists to neo-Fascists, critics of the USSR frequently found themselves sharing a platform or a petition with someone whose politics in other respects they abhorred. Such unholy alliances were a prime target for Soviet polemic and it was sometimes difficult to persuade liberal critics of Communism to voice their opinions in public for fear of being tarred with the brush of reaction.

Women always studied other women, and did so far more critically than men ever did. Men didn't notice the run in their stocking, the lipstick on their teeth, the dated, outgrown haircut, the skirt that pulled unflattering across the hips, the paste earrings that were a touch too gaudy. Violet registered every flaw and knew every flaw that was being noted about her.

I can take criticism. Or at least, I can if you put it nicely.

I don't read reviews. I haven't read them for probably 30 years. I can't. When they're bad, they're really rough, and when they're good, they're not good enough.

I do seriously think that the most profound criticism of the culture of our time can be found in a sentence which, I believe, was written by Artemus Ward, which runs, I think: "It isn't so much people's ignorance that does the harm as it is their knowing so many things that ain't so.

It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth.

I don't feel the need to direct. I tried to get other people to direct Dances, but they wouldn't do it. They all thought it was too long. One director wanted to cut the Civil War sequence. Another thought the white woman was very cliched.

I've had some movies that have been ridiculed, but that's OK with me. I don't feel that really defines me. Should I change who I am to be popular?

Then I realized that I was falling victim to one of the fallacies of the bad reviewer (whose habits we already discussed at length in yesterday's commentary). I was wishing that Hamid had written a different book than he had. How I might have written this story is completely irrelevant. It would be like dismissing The Godfather because I wished it were a musical. The novel needs to be considered on its own terms.

I don't think it's ever fair for a reader to criticize an author for writing the book the novelist wanted to write, as opposed to the book the reader wished he had written.

I've seen too many writers derail their creative process by stopping the action to tweak a word or a sentence. If you write a few paragraphs, then go back and polish them, you destroy all the forward momentum you had. It's like shifting gears—forward, reverse, forward, reverse. You could burn out your mental transmission. If you can train yourself to save the criticism for the second draft, you'll actually finish writing and have something to polish.

When you keep people waiting they begin to think of all your flaws.

The President of the United States is an asshole! The King and Queen of England, and all members of Parliament and the House of Lords are assholes! The Pope is an asshole! Rip his picture up, fair viewers! Rip it up now!" He looked away from the Teleprompter then, face grave. "I could continue reading, but it's safe to say every world government and religious leader is, in fact, an asshole

What happens to children of critical-eyed parents is that they begin avoiding criticism at all costs because it becomes too threatening. Rather than finish a task, they'll stop an inch short and start something else.