Critics Quotes - Page 3

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.

And, instead of pelting these babbling idiots with their own freshly toasted marshmallows, everyone else sitting around the fire is often nodding and smiling and looking solemny thoughtful.

Stop expecting the world to affirm you as a person. Half of the world will like you and the other half will hate you, despite what you say or do. Christ knew this truth, but he did his life mission anyways.

It’s hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie.

At that shameful stage in the development of our criticism, literary abuse would overstep all limits of decorum; literature itself was a totally extraneous matter in critical articles: they were pure invective, a vulgar battle of vulgar jokes, double-entendres, the most vicious calumnies and offensive constructions. It goes without saying, that in this inglorious battle, the only winners were those who had nothing to lose as far as their good name was concerned. My friends and I were totally deluded. We imagined ourselves engaged in the subtle philosophical disputes of the portico or the academy, or at least the drawing room. In actual fact we were slumming it.

The opinion of success matters more than the opinions of your critics.

Everyone is watching you. If you don’t believe it, just pretend to fail and you’ll see many mockers. For this reason, work hard as if you are doing everyone’s business!

On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. — Ignore critics. Critics are a dime a dozen. Anybody can be a critic. Writers are priceless. — Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn’t help you. Do it your own way. — Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write. — The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won’t write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any. Good luck.

[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the day before in some library or other, and treats in heathenish fashion people at whose feet he ought to sit, and the most ignorant of whom could give points to much wiser men than he.Authors bear this sort of thing with a magnanimity and a patience that are really incomprehensible. For, after all, who are those critics, who with their trenchant tone, their dicta, might be supposed sons of the gods? They are simply fellows who were at college with us, and who have turned their studies to less account, since they have not produced anything, and can do no more than soil and spoil the works of others, like true stymphalid vampires.

A guest sees more in an hour than the host in a year.

The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism founded upon appreciation of beauty and of intellectual distinction and of duty.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world--they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this one.

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

ld heads forgetful of their sins,Old, learned, respectable bald headsEdit and annotate the linesThat young men, tossing on their beds,Rhymed out in love’s despairTo flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.They’ll cough in the ink to the world’s end;Wear out the carpet with their shoesEarning respect; have no strange friend;If they have sinned nobody knows.Lord, what would they sayShould their Catullus walk that way?

All great people had critics but they still believe in the beauty of their dreams, fully persuaded to stay focused and determined for the realisationof their dreams.

It is in vain to stone the sky, no matter how big the rock is.

My friend is my friend, even if he wears rag, even if he wasn't born with a silver spoon, even if nobody wants to be his friend, i will hurt his critics by remaining his friend.

The good critic is he who narrates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.

It is not expected of critics that they should help us to make sense of our lives they are bound only to attempt the lesser feat of making sense of the ways we try to make sense of our lives.

There is something essentially ridiculous about critics, anyway: what is good is good without our saying so, and beneath all our majesty we know this.

I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.

This is what is known as perspective, and it is a swindle.

Still the voices of your critics. Listen intently to your own voice, to the person who knows you best. Then answer these questions: Do you think you should move ahead? How will you feel if you quit pursuing this thing you want to do? And what does your best self advise? What you hear may change your life.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.", October 31, 1977]

Don’t answer every critic. Sometimes, the answers you give may be right but misconceived and misunderstood.

Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world. If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so

Corporate irony not only ridicules the thing it is selling but the very act of selling it. In the process it disarms critics by making anyone who goes against the flow of commerce seem clueless.

Everyone else believes in you. The major problem is that not all can let you know as in the way you may wish. Some will only let you know through their tests of criticism!

The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.

To become a better you, secure your dreams from the jaws of people who discredit your ambitions.

If roses were not special weeds would not envy them.

The victory is not to change the mind of the critic; it is to evaluate what you can learn and discard, yet still walk away with peace in your heart.

When they try to judge you,remember, they themselves are judged.When they try to condemn you,remember, they themselves are condemned.When they try to break you,remember, they themselves are broken.When they try to hurt you,remember, they themselves are hurting.

That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

To avoid enemies, say nothing; to avoid critics, do nothing; to avoid haters, be nothing; but to avoid mediocrity, ignore them all.

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

Leaders look out for people who can criticize them constructively and rebuke them reasonably.

I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't.

They said you would fall,but were surprised when you were rising.The said you would fail,but were surprised when you were succeeding.They said you would break,but were surprised when you kept it together.The said you would deteriorate,but were surprised when you were flourishing.

If you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone?

They fired arrows at me, but I did not fire back. I picked them up instead to build my castle.

The devil's happy when the critics run you off.

Two and two continue to make four in spite of the whine of the amateur for three or the cry of the critic for five.

Respond to critics with humility. Most people are experts in finding problems with whatever others do. That should not be a surprise to you.

Freedom of Speech has become Freedom of Stupidity on the internet. Some ignominious users should not be given a voice to comment at all.

I don’t want to be a critic of the world. I want to encourage it.

The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

Critiquing a doer isn’t doing.

These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made.

Far from being a pack of baying butchers,critics sometimes have a perverse habit of tending to the sick and wounded on the cinematic field of battle, rushing in where angels fear to tread, even when the patient is clearly without a pulse.

You are not what your critics say you are. You are wonderful sacred-soul.

I think there’s a ton of fear in the perception of romance in part because there’s something very realistic in great romance — namely, that women have the right to demand relationships that are based on equality and honesty and trust and, yes, a great sex life.

The truth may roar, but it's roaring does not terrify the blameless. Guilty conscience needs neither a critic nor an accuser. Remember, the truth has no aiding crutches; once it is limping, its name is "a lie'.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.

His words leap across rivers and mountains but his thoughts are still only six inches long.

When they judge you, yawn.When they misunderstand you, smile.When they underestimate you, laugh.When they condemn you, ignore.When they envy you, rejoice.When they oppose you, prevail.

Critics are biased and so are readers. (Indeed a critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.) But intelligent readers soon discover how to allow for the windage of their own and a critic's prejudices.