Quotes About Criticism

All of our making fun of things isn't making the world any better. We've spent so much time judging what other people have created that we've created very, very little of our own.

Other reviewers hated it. Oh, they called it too dark." Too violent." Too strident and shrill and dogmatic." They would've loved Barn-Raising Club.

Posing girl, you are so Godawful ugly. Did you let an elephant sit on your face or what?

Sapientia autem est, ut a veteribus philosophis definitum est, rerum divinarum et humanarum causarumque, quibus eae res continentur, scientia, cuius studium qui vituperat haud sane intellego quidnam sit quod laudandum putet.

The convention of not answering back allows able women a scornful superiority, flashing out in looks, in suppression of comment, withheld speech; quellingly disdainful, devastatingly critical, but always held in check. This pent-up power, secretly triumphant because unrealised, is the incendiary device at the heart of Jane Eyre, and of all Charlotte Brontë's works.

Proust is long-winded, precious, and a bit of an old woman

Beautiful, Grillo said. Would Swift approve? Fuck Swift. Somebody should have.

You think I'm finished, so you're leaving me to be crucified by every piece of shit journalist in the fucking country.

The Outsider is primarily a critic, and if a critic feels deeply enough about what he is criticizing, he becomes a prophet.

Truth: When criticized you go berserk, but in your defense remember that it is those who calmly listen who never change.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.

The indifference of the world which Keats and Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in her case not indifference but hostility. The world did not say to her as it said to them, Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me. The world said with a guffaw, Write? What's the good of your writing?

Roses, she thought sardonically, All trash, m'dear.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

The work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. [on James Joyce's Ulysses ]

a leering, sneering obscene little harpy...

Thank God, Helen, I'm not like you! I sometimes think you don't think or feel or care to do anything but exist! You're like Mr. Hirst. You see that things are bad, and you pride yourself on saying so. It's what you call being honest; as a matter of fact it's being lazy, being dull, being nothing. You don't help; you put an end to things.

Shakespeare is getting flyblown; a paternal government might well forbid writing about him, as they put his monument at Stratford beyond the reach of scribbling fingers. With all this buzz of criticism about, one may hazard one's conjectures privately, make one's notes in the margin; but, knowing that someone has said it before, or said it better, the zest is gone. Illness, it its kingly sublimity, sweeps all that aside and leaves nothing but Shakespeare and oneself.

We had nothing to say to each other; and I was conscious that not only my remarks but my presence was criticized. They wished for the truth, and doubted whether a woman could speak it or be it. I thought this courageous of them; but unsympathetic. I had to remember that one is not full grown at 21.

But whatever effect discouragement and criticism had upon their writing—and I believe that they had a very great effect

And if someone should see, what matter they?

The indifference of the world which Keats and Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in her case not indifference but hostility.

È che pensava a lei, la criticava, e di nuovo, dopo trent'anni, provava a spiegarsela.

And again I am reminded by dipping into newspapers and novels and biographies that when a woman speaks to women she should have something very unpleasant up her sleeve. Women are hard on women. Women dislike women.