The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.
The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights actors and audiences - a figure dreaded and occasionally comic but never welcome never loved.
His words leap across rivers and mountains but his thoughts are still only six inches long.
If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.
A critic at best is a waiter at the great table of literature.
Critics work for you;they reveal your weaknesses.Critics work against you;they envy your strengths.Wisdom works for you;it counters your weaknesses.Faith works for you;it increases your strengths.Forg...
I don't want to see the uncut version of anything.
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done they've seen it done every day but they're unable to do it themselves.
To many people dramatic criticism must seem like an attempt to tattoo soap bubbles.
Critasism is just a way of saying i'm jelous of your talents
It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
There is, perhaps, no more dangerous man in the world than the man with the sensibilities of an artist but without creative talent. With luck such men make wonderful theatrical impresarios and interio...
This is what is known as perspective, and it is a swindle.
There is probably no hell for authors in the next world--they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this one.
Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never...
As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full...
Vilify! Vilify! Some of it will always stick.
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
Many critics are born of envy.