“ More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader and would no more read a book alone if they could help it than have a baby alone. Randall Jarrell
“ Those who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite. John Dryden
“ Not a moment passes these days without fresh rushes of academic lemmings off the cliffs they proclaim the political responsibilities of the critic, but eventually all this moralizing will subside. Harold Bloom
“ It is not expected of critics that they should help us to make sense of our lives they are bound only to attempt the lesser feat of making sense of the ways we try to make sense of our lives. Frank Kermode
“ Two and two continue to make four in spite of the whine of the amateur for three or the cry of the critic for five. James McNeill Whistler
“ Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along. E.M. Forster
“ Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left. Oliver Wendell Holmes
“ Critics are biased and so are readers. (Indeed a critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.) But intelligent readers soon discover how to allow for the windage of their… Whitney Balliett
“ Criticism is like dissecting a dead frog," Caleb said when the book was published. "They're examining all the guts and shit and organs, when the thing that really matters, whatever it was that animate… Kevin Wilson
“ It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it m… Samuel Johnson
“ At that shameful stage in the development of our criticism, literary abuse would overstep all limits of decorum; literature itself was a totally extraneous matter in critical articles: they were pure… Vladimir Odoyevsky
“ I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me. Max Reger
