quotations about criticism
In criticism I will be bold, and sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Letters of Edgar Allan Poe
Criticism is a life without risk.
JOHN LAHR
Light Fantastic
Time is the best critic.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
From the writer’s point of view, critics should be ignored, although it’s hard not to do what they suggest. I think it’s unfortunate to have critics for friends. Suppose you write something that stinks, what are they going to say in a review? Say it stinks? So if they’re honest, they do, and if you were friends you’re still friends, but the knowledge of your lousy writing and their articulate admission of it will be always something between the two of you, like the knowledge between a man and his wife of some shady adultery.
WILLIAM STYRON
The Paris Review, spring 1954
Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you’ve got a pretty neck.
ELI WALLACH
attributed, The Book of Classic Insults
If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic.
EDWARD ALBEE
Theater Week, 1988
The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
Characters
You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.
EDWARD ALBEE
"Edward Albee: An Interview", Edward Albee: Planned Wilderness
Time is the only critic.
JAMES M. CAIN
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978
Criticism very often consists of measuring the learning and the wisdom of others, either by our own ignorance, or by our little technical and pedantic partialities and prejudices.... A book thus unfairly treated, may be compared to the laurel, of which there is honor in the leaves, but poison in the extract.
HORACE SMITH
The Tin Trumpet
I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Francis Hopkinson, Mar. 13, 1789
A poet that fails in writing, becomes often a morose critic. The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
A critic is an old maid that writes instructions to you concerning the rearing of your own children.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good; if meagre, muddy, vapid, and sour, both are fit only to engender colic and wind; but if rich, generous, and sparkling, they communicate a genial glow to the spirits, improve the taste, expand the heart, and are worthy of being introduced at the symposium of the gods.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
What flocks of critics hover here to-day,
As vultures wait on armies for their prey,
All gaping for the carcass of a play!
With croaking notes they bode some dire event,
And follow dying poets by the scent.
JOHN DRYDEN
prologue, All for Love
The method of the critic is to balance praises with censure, and thus to do justice to the subject and--his own discrimination.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
An author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an animal whom every body is privileged to attack: for though all are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them.
MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS
The Monk
God knows, people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp-following eunuchs of literature.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
letter to Sherwood Anderson, May 23, 1925
What he, the writer, is asking is impossible. Why should he expect this extraordinary being, the perfect critic (who does occasionally exist), why should there be anyone else who comprehends what he is trying to do? Aftar all, there is only one person spinning that particular cocoon, only one person whose business it is to spin it.
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973