“What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.”
“The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.”
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
“Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.”
“Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.”
“The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.”
“It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's ''mature'' critics often are.”
“Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.”
“Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.”
“The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.”
“In reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.”
“I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.”
“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.”
“A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.”
“When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.”
“Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.”
“The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.”
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
“Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.”
“People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.”
“The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.”
“There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.”
“I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.”
“To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.”
“Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.”
“Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.”
“The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.”
“Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled ''wrong.''”
“I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.”
“Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.”