Popular quotes about Critics! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
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.
Alexander PayneThere 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.
Aaron SorkinBecause Fox News is allegedly biased in favor of conservatives, critics whine like children whose lunch money got snatched. Conservatives have been pummeled for decades. Now that Fox News and conservative talk radio give people alternatives, critics squeal as if being sodomized.
Larry ElderThere will always be critics. On one hand, criticism can be positive. On the other hand, criticism can be negative. But critics will always be watching the game. If you listen to everybody, you can go crazy. I have my own point of view, and I always try to keep it.
Alexander OvechkinIn 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.
Michael StipeWe triggered a discussion in society about the connection between church and state as well as our justice system. Putin is the leader, the icon and the guarantor of an authoritarian system that crushes Kremlin critics along with the help of the secret police and ever changing methods and laws.
Yekaterina SamutsevichI don't know what to say about literary critics. I think it's probably best to say nothing.
Salman RushdieI 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.
Edward AlbeeReviewers and critics can be overly cynical. If something the least bit sentimental comes up, they'll often start flying off the handle. But I'm like, 'Wait a minute, you've had those times in your life. Everybody has.
Gilberto Hernandez GuerreroListen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.
Jean CocteauI 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.
Jerry SaltzCritics have noted Schwarzenegger's only previous government experience was serving under President Bush senior as Chairman of the Council of Physical Fitness, a largely symbolic office, where Schwarzenegger's only responsibility was doing hundreds of jumping jacks he was going to do anyway.
Jon StewartYou know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
W. Somerset MaughamIf 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.
Mariah CareyAmerica's critics can be heard everywhere. It is too much in love with money - worshipping the god of the marketplace, the golden calf. It has too much money, seven of the top 10 banks, eight of the top 10 companies etc. It is too stingy, giving away less of its wealth than other countries. It is vulgar, a rich barbarian.
Maurice SaatchiSome critics are stimulating in that they make you realise how you could do better, and those are valued.
Francis Ford CoppolaIf 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.
Garry KasparovI don't like critics; I really don't like them. I think most of them are ignorant and don't have a clue!
John RzeznikI've lost many of my best friends... I'm going to satisfy myself now, not the critics, not even my friends.
Elia KazanI am obsessed by the idea of silence. I went through an entire library studying art, artists and their critics, philosophers, too, on the meaning and significance of the color white. I dreamed of white birds and white bears. I thought about the white pages of my mother's journals. I became enthralled with John Cage and his work, 4'33โ, his masterpiece of ambient sound. Rauschenberg, too. And then at some point I let go. What sticks to the soul is what gets placed on the page. Maybe that's the unknown part, the mystery, the power of the empty page.
Terry Tempest WilliamsOf 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.
John LahrCynics and critics wake us up. Kindness often covers up the truth and allows us to sleep on in our ignorance.
Wilferd PetersonTo 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.
Immanuel WallersteinCritics called me 'egregious' - I had to look that one up - and 'creepy', but now I don't read them, I weigh them.
Craig CharlesThere is nothing more common than critics of journalists accusing them of practicing journalism. It is our function in the world to take things that are complicated and render them in a form that non-experts can follow and make sense of.
Malcolm Gladwell"How could you think of such awful things?" liberal critics always ask. "How else could I possibly amuse myself?" I always wonder.
John WatersI'm the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think โ just ask my critics.
Daniel DennettI think a single sentence by Van Gogh is better than the whole work of all the art critics and art historians put together.
John OlsenI 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.
Noel CowardI never know who's influencing me at any time. I mean, I can take a play by Brecht and adapt it, I'm consciously adapting that play, or, as I've done with the Greek classics, Euripides and Oedipus, and I'm consciously adapting that play. Whether it influences me or not, I think it's the critics, the analysts who have to decide that. Me, I don't feel that I'm under the influence of any such sources.
Wole SoyinkaCritics often point to historical issues such as slavery, upon which many Christians did act inconsistently, in an effort to invalidate Christian participation in contemporary social issues.
H. Wayne HouseMost 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.
Joseph SobranCritics of art are like eunuchs in harem. They see how it's done when the men come to see the women, but they can't do it themselves.
Gary BuseyWhen you do something that you know is authentic - embrace it, run with it, and trust yourself before the critics.
Marc EckoThere is no virtue in being uncritical; nor is it a habit to which the young are given. But criticism is only the burying beetle that gets rid of what is dead, and, since the world lives by creative and constructive forces, and not by negation and destruction, it is better to grow up in the company of prophets than of critics.
Richard LivingstoneWomen excel more in literary judgment than in literary production,--they are better critics than authors.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of BlessingtonThe people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books. When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.
Chuck KlostermanBut I honestly don't read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews, but I always insist that I can't hear them. If you give value to the good reviews, you have to give value to the criticism.
Fiona Apple[Lost of the absolute] is in this sense that ''I no longer know what to do with my life" must be understood. Critics have been mistaken about the meaning of this phrase, seeing in it a cry of despair as in Simone de Beauvoir's "I have been cheated." When she uses this word it is to indicate that she claims from life an absolute which she cannot find there.
Jean-Paul SartreBy 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.
Ralph EllisonThe 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.
Edward Abbey