Quotes About Critics

There are television critics, movie critics, and theater critics too who I like and who I follow and I get genuinely bummed when they don't like something that I've written because I usually agree with them.

The evolution of social media into a robust mechanism for social transformation is already visible. Despite many adamant critics who insist that tools like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are little more than faddish distractions useful only to exchange trivial information, these critics are being proven wrong time and again.

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.

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.

I'm not a comedian. I can play off of people, but I'm not that guy. I don't want people being like, 'Yeah, he should have stuck with drama.' It would not be my choice to have critics mumbling that.

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.

As a writer, its important to stay true to your story without giving a hoot about publishers, critics and readers. You should do your karma as an author the way you want to, and rest is up to God.

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.

It is hubris, claim the critics of 'absolutism', to suppose that we could ever even approximate to a true description of how the world anyway is. It is bad faith or 'bullshit', respond 'absolutists', to suppose - as the rhetoric of postmodernism implies - that we could seriously live and act with the thought that truth and value are simply our own projections. An attractive feature of 'ineffabilism', as I see it, is that it evades these accusations.

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.

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

The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great.

If critics have problems with my personal life, it's their problem. Anybody with half a brain would realize that it's the charts that count.

I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things

I'm praying for Barack Obama to stay on the tightrope because I want to fight his right-wing critics. I want to down I want to ensure they don't lie about him. I'm sure they don't demonize him, and too much of that is going on. So I don't want my critiques to be in any way confused with the right-wing critiques, even though I'll fight for the right wing to be wrong in that regard.

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

Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.

Anybody who helps the poor is delighted. So naturally, they (critics) are not very happy with us.

I know all the critics.

I'm too rich to care what the critics say.

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.

Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating. Youngsters need good models more than they need critics. It's one of a parent's greatest responsibilities and opportunities.

You know, I didn't write my books for critics and scholars. I wrote them for students and artists. When I hear how much my work has meant to them--well, I can't tell you how happy that makes me. That means that this great stuff of myth, which I have been so privileged to work with, will be kept alive for a whole new generation. That's the function of the artists, you know, to reinterpret the old stories and make them come alive again, in poetry, painting, and now in movies.

There are good and bad critics like good or bad artists. A good critic says why they didn't like it. A bad critic gives it away that they don't like you as a person. I quite like that as well, because it means that I've won.

Critics only make you stronger. You have to look at what they are saying as feedback. Sometimes the feedback helps, and other times, it's just noise that can be a distraction.

Anticipating attacks, I should like to emphasize that I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views.

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

To offer the complexities of life as an excuse for not addressing oneself to the simpler, more manageable (trivial) aspects of daily existence is a perversity often indulged in by artists, husbands, intellectuals -- and critics of the Women's Movement.

We're all our own worst critics and so hard on ourselves, but for me, my biggest insecurity is my arms. I just hate the tops of them. I work out and they still never look good enough for me. So, over the years I've learned to dress to make myself feel better.

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 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 have a work presently in the Press named 'Six Months in Hell' which you may one day read. I consider it will be worth perusing, bruising badly the morals of Britain and America, while Royalty, clergy, critics, society and bloodhounds of law must all incur its censure.

Several of my critics have said, 'Bowerman just tacks up a piece of paper in the locker room and turns his runners loose.' They're partially right. I do give the athletes a relatively free rein and for good reason. One of my principles is? 'Don't overcoach.'

When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble.

The thing about living in New York is that there are other artists; that is the most difficult, I think they are the hardest critics.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

My job is to notice echoes and notice resonances. Scientists are not supposed to do the same thing that cultural critics do.

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

Some Critics on the Hearth are not only good-natured, but have rather too high, or, if that is impossible, let us say too pronounced, an opinion of the abilities of their literary friends.

Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are to busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity? Surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?

Critics or musicians who attack me are jealous of my success and the fact that I make people feel so happy.

When I did the album Electric Circus, not only was it not commercially received. But even the critics and hip-hop community was like "What is this?" At that moment, I could've been written off. But I had to believe because I really love what I do. I'm passionate about it. If 12 million recognize it, that's beautiful. If 12,000 do, that's beautiful. But I'm always going to put my heart and soul in it and I'm going to shoot for the stars and go for the highest levels of recognition and creativity. I definitely doubted myself at the time. But it always come back to believing what I do.

Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.

I have been in a lot of movies, but none of them are critics' darlings, you might say.

Sometimes the critics review me harshly for not being critical of government but it's not me who has said I was political.

Many critics speak about coming-of-age love, about initiation, about young libido, and so forth. I've never seen it only this way. We continue to examine things ever so minutely, we interpret obsessively. We may be less bold at 40 than we were at 17, but we're familiar with the road map; we know the bumps in the road; we recognize the sudden turns, the one-way streets, and the dead ends. And we are hurt just the same as when we were teenagers.

The way something looks or sounds is also what it means. Words as visual and aural phenomena, which mainly poets, not critics and prose writers, tend to be obsessed with. I think maybe I'm more of a curator than I am a writer in the strict sense because I am interested in how everything on the page, in a space, works together.

A leader must not let critics set the agenda.