Quotes About Critics

I don't have any bone to pick with critics. In fact, if I wasn't a filmmaker I would probably be a film critic. Most of my bone is I would be a better film critic than most of the film critics I read.

Doing what is right in the face of adversity is not always easy or popular. Critics may assail you, but the critics don't always realize what they don't know or don't understand, because they don't have access to all the information.

People like [Memoirs of a Woman Doctor], whether young people, young women, even critics - male critics - they were not shocked by it. Of course, some parts were cut.

I think the harsh reviews helped, in that I spent way more energy in the preproduction and development. From this point of view, I'm very thankful for the harsh critics. I still think the critics were unnecessarily insulting in a lot of things, but I think it helped.

Someone has said that even criticism is better than silence. I don't agree to this. Criticism can be very harmful unless it comes from a master; and in spite of the fact that we have hundreds of critics these days, it is one of the most difficult of professions.

[John Calvin's] treatment of the person and work of Christ, of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, of prayer and liturgy, of the sacraments, and of the way in which we have an in-built sense of the divine that we suppress to our great sorrow - these are all immense contributions to Christian thought. The same could be said of his commentaries, which are still regularly consulted by biblical critics today.

My play Safe Sex was picked apart because critics thought it was untrue. It was a play in which no one had AIDS, but the characters talked about how it was going to change their lives.

Does it take a blanket presupposition for a historian to discount some miracle stories as legendary? No, because, as even Bultmann recognized, there is no problem accepting reports even of extraordinary things that we can still verify as occurring today, like faith healings and exorcisms. However you may wish to account for them, you can go to certain meetings and see scenes somewhat resembling those in the gospels. So it is by no means a matter of rejecting all miracle stories on principle. Biblical critics are not like the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.

We have been educated to such a fine - or dull - point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Last year I gave several lectures on "Intelligence and Musicality among Animals" ... Today I am going to speak to you about "Intelligence and Musicality among Critics" ... The subject is much the same, with some modifications, of course.

Girls' inner critics are starting to reveal themselves at a younger and younger age. And body image issues are an aspect of their lives which is causing them low self esteem and day-to-day suffering.

Critics are entitled to have an opinion, but how can they judge how comfortable a building is? No critic is smart enough to judge how a building will perform over time.

There are conversations going on about the Church constantly. Those conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what our Church teaches... We are living in a world saturated with all kinds of voices. Perhaps now, more than ever, we have a major responsibility as Latter-day Saints to define ourselves, instead of letting others define us.

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.

If critics and competitors can't match your results, they will often denigrate the way you achieve them. Fast, intuitive types are called lazy. Dedicated burners of the midnight oil are called obsessed. And while it's obviously not a bad idea to hear and consider the opinions of others, you should be suspicious when these criticisms emerge right on the heels of success.

I don't like critics; I really don't like them. I think most of them are ignorant and don't have a clue!

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!

When I was your age, art was a lonely thing: no galleries, no collecting, no critics, no money. We didn't have mentors. We didn't have parents. We were alone. But it was a great time, because we had nothing to lose and a vision to gain.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

I am really inspired by writers, and weirdly - respect music journalists, which I think makes me the exception amongst most musicians. I think it's a craft. I think it's been really neglected - sadly. I think about the days of the great legendary rock critics. Who's going to become that when magazines and newspapers don't pay anyone properly or don't seem to respect the history or research that is required?

There will be a competition among critics for the best Paris Hilton insult. Here's my first: Her attention span is so short that she can't even maintain her concentration while running away from a psycho... Maybe the ultimate insult is that she makes her co-star Elisha Cuthbert seem, by comparison, the sexiest and most interesting actress in modern cinema.

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

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's 'mature' critics often are.

Critics are already made.

I used to respond to people who are dismissive of my work, but as I grow older, I think it's best to ignore your critics. For one thing, they can't stand it, and secondly, you're never going to change them.

I'm back in fashion again for a while now. But I imagine that three or four years from now I'll be out again. And in another fifteen years I'll be back. If you try to write to stay in fashion, if you try to write to be the critics' darling, you become an employee.

My writing of fiction comes under a very general heading of those teachers, critics, scholars who like to try their own hand once or twice in their lives.

I really think there's a difference between how men critics see things than how women tend to. And I don't want to make that - it's not a generality and I don't want to say that, but I just feel - I know I do the same thing. There are certain things that I just am not that interested in. Certain kinds of films - I just don't enter them.

I don't know, I don't pay attention to critics anyway. They either like me or they don't, you know what I mean? I am too long in the tooth to worry about that.

I do not put myself in a box and say, for instance, I'm writing post-colonial literature. I don't know what I'm writing. That's the business of professors and critics. My job is to tell a story, and that's it.

Critics of Donald Trump take him literally, but not seriously. His supporters take him seriously, but not literally.

The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that's how long it's going to take, guys.

Critics? I love every bone in their heads.

The word 'art' is very slippery. It really has no importance in relation to one's work. I work for the pleasure, for the pleasure of the work, and everything else is a matter for the critics.

Most of those who spend their lives as critics secretly wish they'd be considered important enough for someone to bother criticizing them.

But thankfully, my first album, Wide Screen, was sort of a critics darling - everyone raved about it, but no one bought it. They only manufactured 10,000 copies; I wasnt even in the running for failure!

No matter what you do next, the world needs your energy, your passion, your impatience for progress. Don't shrink from risk. And tune out those critics and cynics. History rarely yields to one person, but think, and never forget, what happens when it does. That can be you. That should be you. That must be you.

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

I agree that one can't dispense with the reins and the whip altogether, for knaves find their way even into literature, but no thinking will discover a better police for literature than the critics and the author's own conscience.

The thing about having an audience right there laughing is that critics can write what they want, but the proof is right there in front of you.

The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads. Laughter, praise, honors, money, and the love of beautiful girls will be your only reward.

I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled "Science Fiction" ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.

I produced a play in New York that got nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best American Play.The play is called Stalking The Bogeyman. It was a story on This American Life, and my former roommate is the artistic director of the New York Repertory Theater. He heard the NPR show, contacted them, and essentially - shortest synopsis ever, like I'm the Cablevision guide button - it's the true story of a man stalking and plotting to kill the man who raped him when he was seven. It's by a brilliant reporter named David Holthouse.

Music critics are, for the most part, bitter people who are intent at dragging people down for being successful at what they want to do, which is probably music. The oddity of being a critic is: You don't get a diploma, you just decide you're a critic. If someone listens to your opinion rather than their own, it's their mistake. Any critic's top 10, any year, it's something controversial or something that will make them look hipper-than-thou. The whole critic game, we've never played.

The whole movie thing has never been a source of great pride for me, in that Burt Reynolds, who starred in the picture, butchered the original script I had written for the late Steve McQueen, and the result, while a massive moneymaker, was lashed by the critics. But like the old joke about Pierre the Bridge Builder, The Cannonball Run is indelibly inscribed on my so-called career portfolio, and few conversations with strangers pass without the subject of the picture arising.

These critics with the illusions they've created about artists - it's like idol worship. They only like people when they're on their way up... I cannot be on the way up again.

I mean, the old film critics just excoriated me.

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