Quotes About Critics

I'm not trying to brainwash my critics. If they're critics, they're critics, and that's their job to be critical, but I certainly enjoy the involvement I have with my fans. I enjoy the time I get to spend with them, and I don't waste time with someone stubborn who is not going to come around.

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!'

I'm a musician and, just as the critics are hard on me, I'm hard on the critics.

If you write for the critics, only the critics will read you.

I am relatively familiar with getting a good old rumping from the critics. In some cases, the critics just didn't like the film - fair cop. Others, I think, didn't understand it.

With a few exceptions, the critics of children's books are remarkably lenient souls.... Most of us assume there is something goodin every child; the critics go from this to assume there is something good in every book written for a child. It is not a sound theory.

I was at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards one year - they called me up when somebody canceled two days before the thing, and asked me to present some awards. So I went, and one of the funniest film moments I've ever had was when they introduced the New York film critics. They all stood up - motley isn't the word for that group. Everybody had some sort of vision problem, some sort of damage - I had to bury myself in my napkin.

I don't have any bone to pick with critics. In fact, if I wasn't a filmmaker I would probably be a film critic. Most of my bone is I would be a better film critic than most of the film critics I read.

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.

When you invent something, there will always be people to criticise. God's creation is full of critics, but has God given up His creation because of the critics?

Sometimes the critics will like a film, and the public doesn't come. Sometimes the critics won't like the film, and the public will come. It's completely spontaneous. It's a hazard.

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.

Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts.

The biggest critics of my books are the people who never read them.

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.

I have learned not to read reviews. Period. And I hate reviewers. All of them, or at least all but two or three. Life is much simpler ignoring reviews and the nasty people who write them. Critics should find meaningful work.

I certainly want to be involved in politics and help shape the transition. I am in contact with regime critics who had to leave for the West. One of them is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former businessman, who had to endure 10 years in a prison camp.

Mann is widely recognized as a master of irony and ambiguity, yet it's remarkable how quickly people foreclose options he carefully leaves open. Lots of readers - including eminent critics - jump to conclusions: that Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy is a central background text, that Aschenbach is an inferior writer, that he's never been attracted by pubescent male beauty before, that he dies of cholera.

Listen 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.

I've never had an easy relationship with critics. I hold a lot of homicide in my heart. If this was another time, I'd be packing a piece.

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.

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.

Our loyalty lies with little taxpayers, not big spenders. What our critics really believe is that those in Washington know better how to spend your money than you, the people, do. But we're not going to let them do it, period.

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

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

Trump is what Obama critics think Obama is: Someone who's focused on symbolism rather than substance.

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

The world still awaits a proper inquiry into climategate: one that is not stacked with global warming advocates and one that is prepared to cross-examine evidence, interview critics as well as supporters of the CRU and other IPCC players, and follow the evidence where it clearly leads.

I really like when critics reveal their subjectivity and their humanity. I prefer it when people say nice things, but if they say not-nice things or things that are critical, I'm open to it and I accept it. I mean, I have to live with it. But I do think there's a dishonesty in not acknowledging that you're a person with an opinion. I think it's almost like a power grab.

Your destiny is not determined by your critics. Focus on running your own race.

If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price. Pay no attention to what the critics say. A statue has never been erected in honor of a critic.

The stones that critics hurl with harsh intent, a man may use to build his monument.

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.'

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.

Cynics and critics wake us up. Kindness often covers up the truth and allows us to sleep on in our ignorance.

If a faultless poem could be produced, I am satisfied it would tire the critics themselves; and annoy the whole reading world with the spleen.

Critics have done the wine industry a lot of good overall.

America is a nation of believers, dreamers and strivers that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics.

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.

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.

I have heard the critics. What they are spewing are lies, nothing more. My defense policy calls for an efficient and strong military for our country. We live in dangerous times, but we must remember that we have to defend the United States against dangerous and modern threats. The Cold War is ending. Defense hawks like Senator Nunn need to understand this.

Everybody is going to have their critics. It's easy to get discouraged in life.

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 think women are excellent social critics.

I don't mind critics. I mean, I wrote for Rolling Stone for a hot minute. I like criticism. I enjoy criticism. The thing I don't like is cruelty for cruelty's sake. You don't have to be a jerk to say something negative. You can say something in the negative sense and have class.

The critics had an image of me, and they wouldn't accept any other... I was a cartoon character. A joke.