Quotes About Critics

I read reviews of critics I respect and feel I can learn something from. Right now there are a lot of bottom-feeder critics who just have access to a computer and don't necessarily have an academic or cinema background that I can detect, so I tend to ignore that and stay with the same top-tier critics that I've come to respect. I like reading a good review - it doesn't have to be favorable, but a well-thought-out one - because I very much appreciate the relationship of directors and 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.

Immortality is a by-product of good work. Masterpieces are not for artists, they're for critics. Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together. My message to the world is 'Let's swing, sing, shout, make noise! Let's not mimic death before our time comes! Let's be wet and noisy!'

Never surrender to cynicism, even if you suspect it would get the critics on your side.Never surrender to cynicism, even if you suspect it would get the critics on your side.

I have been lucky that some critics joined the mob in loving something I've done, or in appreciating it. I've been lucky. But most of the critics don't like what the people like. I think they have a very strange job, and they are meant to criticize.

Many of my sharpest critics have decided to take a position of ignoring me - because they feel that by attacking me, they would draw attention to my book and give me more publicity and help me sell more books. So I think that they decided that the best thing for them to do is to say nothing. Also, I think that some of my critics simply can't refute my argument - and so it's easier for them to ignore it as well, so that they're not forced to confront the logical contradiction in their own position.

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.

Every time I work out in the gym, every time I train, I know I'm going to do well. But I like surprising the fans, the critics, the people who doubt me.

[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.

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.

I find that the critics of voluntary service are all too often those who are prepared to accept such services when they require them but deride them with cynicism and scepticism when they see others helping and being helped.

For some reason most critics have a hard time fixing their minds directly under their noses, and before they see the object that is there they use a telescope upon the horizon to see where it came from.

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.

If any human being earnestly desire to push on to new discoveries instead of just retaining and using the old; to win victories over Nature as a worker rather than over hostile critics as a disputant; to attain, in fact, clear and demonstrative knowlegde instead of attractive and probable theory; we invite him as a true son of Science to join our ranks.

We don't make movies for critics. I've done four movies; there's millions upon millions upon millions of people who've paid to see them. Somebody likes them. My greatest joy is to sit anonymously in a dark theater and watch it with an audience, a paying audience.

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty.

If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.

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.

Don't spend all your time trying to win over your critics. Just run your own race.

Music critics are part of the world, and I am part of the world.

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written

Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment, too?

Critics are like brushers of noblemen's clothes.

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

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.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

I know all the critics.

It's [Into the Badlands] something that's very, very different and I think that's why it divided critics initially because they didn't understand it or get it. They didn't understand or have a knowledge of what we were trying to do. Bringing in the Asian martial arts aesthetic to American television. For us, these are the people who will make the show a hit or a failure in future seasons. So it's for us to respect them and interact and see what they have to say.

Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.

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.

I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that's not in me. I want to lift people up.

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

And so with Hemingway's writing, he famously wrote to one of his publishers - he said, you don't need a high school education to enjoy my writing. And it's going to titillate the masses. I mean, anybody can relate to it, but the style is so revolutionary that it will titillate highbrow critics, which it did.

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.

The final outcome cannot be known, either to the originator of a new theory, or to his colleagues and critics, who are bent on falsifying it. Thus, the scientific innovator may feel all the more lonely and uncertain.

When I first started, especially because I got the Critics' Choice before I'd released an album, there was a lot of scrutiny on what my character was, what my background was, what colour my hair was. I fought quite hard for the music to overtake the personality aspect.

Dear, damned, distracting town, farewell! Thy fools no more I'll tease: This year in peace, ye critics, dwell, Ye harlots, sleep at ease!

Most of my critics don't even listen to me; they are clueless. They just go to Web sites that report what I say out of context.

New York critics - I hear when one of them watched "A Star Is Born", he talked back to the screen.

I've always felt if my nose were more crooked, critics would focus more on my acting.

Younger teachers are definitely more likely to have worked at charter schools as opposed to have just heard of them. Charter schools explicitly look, often, to hire younger people. I've even talked to people who didn't necessarily go into teaching thinking they wanted to work at a charter school or even may have been considered critics of the charter school movement, and found that it was the only way for them to get their foot in the door. So young people just have much more familiarity with the concept.

We're not trying to entertain the critics ... I'll take my chances with the public.

I was blessed to look well and retain a youthful look but that was just genes. I was disappointed when critics started pointing out my wrinkles. I thought, you mean this is what it's gonna be about now? I'm not going to be permitted to be human?

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

I don't believe that anyone is not bothered by critics. I think that everybody cares.

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.