Quotes About Critics

One of the things I always underscore when I teach criticism is that young critics, or would be critics, frequently have this illusion that if they write about music they're somehow part of music, or if they write about movies they're part of movies, or of they write about theater they're part of theater, or write about literature. Writing is a part of literature, we belong the species of literature. If you add all the music reviews together that have ever been written, they don't create two notes of music.

The thing we call critics are not really reviewers, they are not really critics. They don't have the discipline to write what we would term as critique - it's really just reviewers. They have a common man kind of taste. If you watch them overall, they are not different from the box-office. That's my view.

Critics like Elvis Costello because critics are like Elvis Costello.

The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff.

In fact, a lot of critics seemed to consider R.E.M. the first American music since the '60s to break out on its own and develop a stand-alone sound.

Eisenhower had run the Army; he knew all the ways decision making can go off the rails, and insisted on collective debate precisely to prevent senior officials from freelancing, or putting their departmental interests first. For all the formal machinery, Eisenhower was very literally the commander in chief, making the key decisions himself and monitoring closely how they were carried out. Even years after D-Day, when critics needled him for not being on the front lines with the invading forces, he retorted, “I planned it and took responsibility for it. Did you want me to unload a truck?

I'm grateful for the likes of Kundera, Murnane, Markson, Berger, and, in his recent work, Coetzee. But no matter how celebrated they are, critics still consider them askance. Elizabeth Costello, for example, is a great novel, but it got quite a critical panning when it was published. The complaint was that it was simply a book of speeches, without the machinery of conventional fiction. Markson's books are compilations of facts and alleged facts, very artfully.

I put all of my energy into building the game and giving women opportunities and, to put everything into it and then to be deemed selfish or not a good team player or outspoken, it's been hard. But at the same time, I'm going to get the critics and I know that.

If you accept all the praise, you have to accept all the critics.

Remind your critics when they say you don't have the expertise or experience to do something that an amateur built the ark and the experts built the Titanic

If you're a young person, like I used to be and you're at home and you're being called weird or different, I'm here to tell you your critics do not count. Their words will fade. You won't.

I am pushed by my critics. I don't want to say I want to prove them wrong, but it pushes me on the field to play with a chip on my shoulder, and I play best when I have a chip on my shoulder.

I think it is the responsibility of critics to rely less strenuously on, to use a Hollywood phrase, "what they can live with," and more on an examination of the works of art from an aesthetic and clinical point of view.

Critics have told me I've ruined the lives of 50 million young people. I can't be certain of this, since only about 10 million have ever come back to thank me.

I think we're going to transition with our comedy programming, trying to broaden the audience and broaden what the network does. Those Thursday comedies, which the critics love and we love, tend to be a bit more narrow than we'd ultimately like, as we go forward.

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.

Do the thing itself. Don’t pay much mind to critics or what anyone says about it. Just do it, in any form possible, and watch others doing it. Take it in viscerally, get it by osmosis. Don’t ever read your own reviews, certainly not the good ones.

I love to go to the movies with people, but a lot of the time it's me in a room with a bunch of other movie critics, which is fine.

Getting the economy back on its feet is properly viewed as an investment in future prosperity. When businesses and consumers confront attractive investment opportunities, often the only way to seize them is by borrowing. The same is true for government. Contrary to the pronouncements of critics of economic stimulus, these investments will not impoverish our grandchildren. Continuing to allow the economy to languish in recession is the surest way to impoverish them.

The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard.

I could never do a show, or be a personality like Howard Stern, where you take all that heat from critics. What he does, he does, but the critical heat would crucify me.

Now see, a lot of critics are saying Arnold can't get elected because he's just an ambitious guy with a famous name, who doesn't know anything about running the government. Didn't hurt George Bush.

As far as I'm concerned, the 20th century was performance-driven, but for some reason, the critics and historians didn't know how to integrate that.

To those critics who see capitalism as a system of inegalitarian, oppressive structures, its defenders have vaunted its ability to recognize and encourage what they call individual merit and asserted not only the desirability but also the inevitability of differential reward, of earned privilege, so to speak.

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 very aspect of religions that many of their critics most fear - that the religiously devout, in the name of their faith, take positions that differ from approved state policy - is one of their strengths.

I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

I've always had to prove myself to people growing up. I had to show them that I could do this and I could do that and paying no mind to what the critics said.

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 of Fox News have pointed out that Fox News does partisan propaganda, and there's ample evidence on a daily basis.

I think women are excellent social critics.

It would be so much better if the critics would come, not on first nights, but on last nights, when they could exercise their undoubted flair for funeral orations.

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 don't expect that the scientific community now embraces and kisses me 'Oh wonderful, great you did!' we have to live with critics, this is normal. Chariots of the Gods was full of speculation, I had 238 question marks. Nobody read the question mark. They always said: Mr. Von Daniken is saying... I did not say, I asked the questions, would that be a posibility? In Chariots of the Gods, I made clear difference between a speculations and facts.

We were 6 feet under. A lot of people gave up on us, including fans and critics and show promoters and record labels.

I have prided myself with striving for objectivity, something many literary-minded critics dismiss as impossible. But in Washington, reporters are practically the only people who actually spend time talking to Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, and I find the longer I report in Washington, the mushier and less conclusive my own views are. I like it that way.

Not as men of science , not as critics , not as philosophers , but as little children , shall we enter into the kingdom of heaven .

Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.

When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet, it was a golden age, for we all had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same. It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity, consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I shall not venture to discuss. But I do know, that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find 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!

As many critics have pointed, out, terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic. Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today's war on terrorism merely makes the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world.

the Press has no band of critics who go the round of the churches and chapels, and are on the watch for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a 'feature' in their article: the clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers.

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.

We read critics for the perceptions, for what they tell us that we didn't fully grasp when we saw the work. The judgments we can usually make for ourselves.

if you think it so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet or a painter or film experimenter, may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets.

What you want is the thing that critics love and audiences love, but that's the hardest thing to do.

In no time whatever can small critics entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar collar reverence for Great Men--genuine admiration, loyalty, adora-tion.