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.

Insofar as we, critics of the black tradition, master our craft, we serve both to preserve our own traditions and to shape their direction. All great writers demand great critics.

The worst advice? 'Don't listen to the critics.' I think that you really ought to listen to the critics, because sometimes they're telling you something is broken that you can fix.

Artists teach critics what to think. Critics repeat what the artists teach them.

Have you ever noticed how most critics disagree with the public? That should tell you a lot about critics.

I've been pretty well treated by the critics, but the critics who didn't like my comedies hated them with an unbridled passion, and then I would see these same people writing very respectfully about ordinary naturalistic plays.

You know, if I started worrying about what the critics think, I'd never make another comedy. You couldn't pick a less funny group than critics - you couldn't find a more bitter group of people!

The more we refuse to buy into our inner critics - and our external ones too - the easier it will get to have confidence in our choices, and to feel comfortable with who we are.

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

Would it be nice to win a film award one day? Yes. But the critics are going to have to wait till I'm ready. Right now, my gift is making big movies that audiences want to see.

We need to have great wealth and we need to have the critics of great wealth.

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.

One thing that I don't think my critics realize about me is that I've been trained to look adversity in the face.

Most men I know adore women, and I am including gay men. I think studies on jury selection show that the biggest critics of women - people less likely to trust their character or judgment - are women.

I don't know what to say about literary critics. I think it's probably best to say nothing.

You 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.

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

Critics say Internet advertising suffers from limitless inventory, which depresses prices. These exclusive front-page sponsorships are not limitless. If HBO doesn't move quickly enough, Showtime can buy out Gawker and Jezebel for the key fall TV season. On any individual day, there isn't room for both of them; and that's healthy.

My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

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.

I've often been accused by critics of being myself on-screen. But being oneself is more difficult than you'd suppose.

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.

The critics don't interest me because they're concerned with what's past and done, while I'm concerned with what comes next.

Computer and video games represent one of the most important new media developments of this generation. Unlike many other forms of entertainment they offer players the opportunity to explore, be creative, learn through interaction and express themselves to others. It is vitally important that we protect and nurture this new art form so that it can reach its full potential. Like most new forms of artistic expression that have come before (music, novels, movies), the primary critics of video games are the people that do not play them.

I've got the public. I don't care about the critics. I did at one time. I don't any more. I did when I needed compliments. But if you get a lot of compliments, you don't need a critic to tell you, 'This should be done another way.'

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.

Of 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.

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence.

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!

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.

I'm a people's actor, not a critics' actor, and I always have been.

When shallow critics denounce the profit motive inherent in our system of private enterprise, they ignore the fact that it is an economic support of every human right we possess and without it, all rights would disappear.

I knew that because of who I am, and the situation I'm in, that I'd attract more critics than your average person, and that was a little intimidating, but I wanted to get out there and pay my dues.

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.

I've encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a lot of skepticism, but it seems to be more a matter of inertia than it is of people having some real reason for thinking something else.

Money drives the world, but when everything falls apart to leave the underpinnings of our life bare to the scrutiny of critics and thieves, the only thing remaining, the only thing that can't be taken away, is the love you hold for the people you care about.

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

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.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

Movies, far more than the traditional arts, are tied to big money. Without a few independent critics, there's nothing between the public and the advertisers.

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.

It is a shame to see in the work of an artist the limitations of his critics.

Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart.

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

No matter what happens, you're always going to have those critics and those haters. You just have to learn how to deal with that. I think I have and accept that.

Critics say the OWS protesters hate the rich. Come on! Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning - they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.