Quotes About Critics

The worst advice? 'Don't listen to the critics.' I think that you really ought to listen to the critics, because sometimes they're telling you something is broken that you can fix.

Critics like Elvis Costello because critics are like Elvis Costello.

With a few exceptions, the critics of children's books are remarkably lenient souls.... Most of us assume there is something goodin every child; the critics go from this to assume there is something good in every book written for a child. It is not a sound theory.

Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

Book critics or theatre critics can be derisively negative and gain delighted praise for the trenchant with of their review. But in criticisms of religion even clarity ceases to be a virtue and sounds like aggressive hostility. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would in other contexts sound merely direct or forthright, and it will be described as a 'rant'.

I've been pretty well treated by the critics, but the critics who didn't like my comedies hated them with an unbridled passion, and then I would see these same people writing very respectfully about ordinary naturalistic plays.

There's always been a lot of negative stuff written about me. That's why I don't pay any attention to the critics. They've never liked anything I've done. What do critics know? It's the way the audience reacts that matters.

My criticism hasn't necessarily been informed by the critics I've read. The conversations I've had with friends and fellow musicians have shaped my thinking more than the work of any critic.

The biggest critics of my books are the people who never read them.

I haven't got a great jazz band and I don't want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat's among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It's all in what you define as 'real jazz.' It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.

What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.

People who refuse to step out and be used by God become the critics of those who do. Risk takers, the ones who thrill the heart of God, become the targets of those who never fail because they seldom try.

One thing that I don't think my critics realize about me is that I've been trained to look adversity in the face.

Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not sometimes be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality.

I see around 100 shows a month, going from Niketown-size palaces where you feel like yelling, to storefronts in Bushwick. Each has to pay the bills; keep artists happy; and cope with collectors (oy!), curators (ay-yi-yi), critics (woo-hoo!), and occasionally plumbers. That their fiscal life often hangs in the balance only adds to the energy.

Critics and fans use the music of their youth as reference points. For years, people seriously wondered who "the next Beatles" were going to be, and classic rock bands were the de facto yardstick for rock quality.

The cultural wars of the sixties are over. I've reconciled with those who were my critics and opponents years ago. I was at odds with some those who were Black nationalists. Yet when feminists attempted to end my career and leave me as literary road kill, it was the Black nationalists who came to my rescue.

Implementation of technological change must involve critics as well as advocates.

Critics who attack my wife bug me. It makes me want to pay 'em a visit so I could give 'em a good punch in the nose.

Of the modern critics, although I disagree with almost everything she says, I admire Mary McCarthy's eloquence and social observation in 'Sights and Spectacles'; she thinks in print, but she doesn't have a real feel for the stage.

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence.

Critics don't really affect the fact that we live in this paradise and what the meaning of that [is]. And what luck to have this!

Critics must excuse me if I compare them to certain animals called asses, who, by gnawing vines, originally taught the great advantage of pruning them.

I know that a ridiculous number of classic serials have been commissioned, and that reviews show a reaction against them. The critics seem fed up.

Well, it's so cheesy to say but you can't find a comedy director who makes movies for critics. When a movie does $580 million worldwide, I'm not saying that proves anything except people were enjoying the experience.

Well, I'm not a critic, I'm just a worker. So, I'm always grateful for anything the critics say - good or bad.

It used to worry me what people said about me. I'm learning not to worry as much. Sometimes you feel critics are wrong all the time, but I don 't take objection to it, because that's the way it goes. They can be wrong, they can be right. They can be cruel, they can be kind.

I have always been very fond of them (drama critics) . . . I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it.

Critics are like ticks on a dog or tits on a motor: ornamental but dysfunctional.

I learned that lesson a long time ago. When you write popular fiction, you're going to get bashed by critics.

You can't make your choices based on what critics think. You have to make your choices based on what's honest for you.

I think that the good thing about working smaller and being a smaller company that doesn't have to make as much to make money back is that you don't have to worry about, well, critics like this and they'll tell people to buy it, but millions of people might say, 'Oh, well I'm not interested in that subject matter' and we're sunk.

There are no statues erected to critics.

every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works, yet we require critics to explain the one and biographers to expound the other. That time hangs heavy on people's hands is the only explanation of the monstrous growth.

Critics say the OWS protesters hate the rich. Come on! Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning - they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

I, along with the critics, have never taken myself very seriously.

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.

I can't hear the critics talking over the applause.

If I don't practise for one day, I know it; if I don't practise for two days, the critics knows it; if I don't practise for three days, the audience knows it.

Every time I make a picture the critics' estimate of American public taste goes down ten percent.

The Brazilian national identity is not one of João Gilberto Noll primary concerns. This does not mean social critique is absent: race, gender, and class relations are considered in Quiet Creature. And these are universal relational matters, not necessarily particular to any country. Some critics have commented that understanding the specific Brazilian political context of the novel is helpful for reading Quiet Creature. This may be true, but it's not prerequisite for understanding it.

Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.

Critics are like horse-flies which hinder the horses in their plowing of the soil. The horse works, all its muscles drawn tight like the strings on a double-bass, and a fly settles on his flanks and tickles and buzzes. And what does the fly buzz about? It scarcely knows itself; simply because it is restless and wants to proclaim: 'Look, I too am living on the earth. See, I can buzz, too, buzz about anything.'

As you begin your tour of the United States, you may as well know that one American national trait which irritates many Americans and must be convenient for our critics is that we relentlessly advertise our imperfections.

Exceptional thinkers ignore their critics and go about their business making history.

I say to consumers: instead of relying totally on critics, drink what you like and like what you drink.

Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.

I have a pretty good sense of when to express misgivings. And white critics are just as capable of pointing those things out and noticing them as people of color.