Quotes About Judgment

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

The homosexual community wants me to be gay. The heterosexual community wants me to be straight. Every writer thinks, I'm the journalist who's going to make him talk. I pray for them. I pray that they get a life and stop living mine!

The main engagement of the writer is towards truthfulness; therefore he must keep his mind and his judgement free.

'Know,' says a wise writer, the historian of kings, 'Know the men that are to be trusted'; but how is this to be? The possession of knowledge involves both time and opportunities. Neither of these are 'handservants at command.'

Men whose sense of taste is destroyed by sickness, sometimes think honey sour. A diseased eye does not see many things which do exist, and notes many things which do not exist. The same thing frequently takes place with regard to the force of words, when the critic is inferior to the writer.

I figure anytime you put an adjective before 'writer,' it's a way of dismissing the writer.

The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.

There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a writer who has just heard that his brain child is a deformed idiot.

Writers always know whether you like them or not.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

Every person who speaks or writes for the public will make an occasional faux pas, and sooner or later will write or say something inappropriate.

You should see all the negative things that the Romanian press writes about me.

If a woman writes about a domestic situation, everyone automatically assumes that it's about her.

Criticism pretty much follows anything anyone ever does. So, anytime anyone ever writes a song, plays a show, or does whatever they do, there's going to be a certain amount of criticism because that's kind of what happens.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.

Every choice brings wisdom in its wake. If you got to have the wisdom first, it wouldn't be a choice--just policy

The world pauses for royalty and deformity alike, and sometimes one can't tell the difference.

One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her-is it ever the right choice?

I do not listen when anyone uses the word immoral, said the Wizard. In the young it is ridiculous, in the old it is sententious and reactionary and an early warning sign of apoplexy. In the middle-aged, who love and fear the idea of moral life the most, it is hypocritical.

She added, perhaps to herself, You have to become old and ugly before anyone listens to you, and then they don't, because you're ugly and old.

You have your own life to live, and at its end, the only opinion that amounts to anything is that which God bestows.

As Solomon said in the Old Book, if two women squabble over which of them is the mother of a certain infant, the way to solve the problem is to cut the baby in half and share the baby in parts." "That's revolting." "Is it? I always wondered if that baby was a colicky brat and both women were really trying to pawn it off on the other one.

To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or to defer it.