Quotes About Criticism

What's the use of being a writer if you can't irritate a great many people?

A man whose every exertion is bent upon showing up the flaws in his wife's character must be at least partially responsible for some of them.

When one told Plistarchus that a notorious railer spoke well of him, "I'll lay my life," said he, "somebody hath told him I am dead, for he can speak well of no man living.'

I couldn't despise a man more than George W. Bush.

It has been my experience that the better a man you are, the more folks there are who resent you for it, and find occasion to get angry at you no matter how kindly meant your deeds may be.

For, rightly, every man is a channel through which heaven floweth, and, whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I was censuring orrather terminating my own soul.

The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real to us as an artist, since we have to take on trust the works of art he produces.

When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.

I think that they [Bush Administration] are men who are possessed of evil.

Rich men are resolved to be astonished at nothing. When they see a masterpiece, they must needs at one glance recognize some flaw to dispense them from admiration, a vulgar emotion.

Neither men, nor gods, nor booksellers' shelves permit ordinary poets to exist. [Lat., Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae.]

Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do write.

A critic is a man who expects miracles.

My mom always said that there would be haters. Not everyone can love ya.

Sometimes I criticize movies. It's not fun to watch a movie with me, because I'll go, "That was a really bad shot." My mom's like, "Shut up, Chloe, watch the film!"

I could do without 'cool' publications calling me 'mom jazz.' But I laughed all the way to the bank, baby.

My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer?

If economists were doctors, they would today be mired in malpractice suits.

Do I understand this right? I'm being marked down?

I don't think I've ever been critical of the money Douglas Adams makes, especially since, as has been tactfully pointed out, I myself have had to change banks having filled the first one up.

I have plenty of enemies... among artists who resent my earning a living. They think I should go off and starve while painting something 'significant.

David Simon goes to the Jewish Weekly and said he's made all this money, but he can't enjoy it because of criticism by people like Ishmael Reed.

The Catholic Church is still very angry about The Da Vinci Code - they don't like anything that makes more money in a weekend than they do.

Once I started selling scripts for a great deal of money - action scripts, no less, which people tend to pooh-pooh anyway - then I started to get some backlash. Which I didn't mind.