Criticism Quotes - Page 10

• If certain Critics were as clearsighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their writings!

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Writing, Would Be, Benefits

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2015). “Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Top Complete Works Collection”, p.82, 谷月社

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• There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

  Anne Stevenson

  Too Much, Kind, Academic

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• If we are to have such a discipline we must have standards, and to get our standards under existing conditions we must have criticism.

  Irving Babbitt

  Discipline, Standards, Conditions

  Irving Babbitt (2005). “On Literature, Cultures, and Religion”, p.114, Transaction Publishers

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• I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.

  Jim Harrison

  Used, Novel

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. June 7, 2004.

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• The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

  Clive James

  Art, Expression, Long

  Clive James (1983). “Glued to the box: television criticism from the Observer, 1979-82”, Jonathan Cape

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• Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

  Leslie Fiedler

  Depressing, Culture Religion, Tradition

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• The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

  Leslie Fiedler

  Historical, Important, Pieces

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• The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

  Paul de Man

  Would Be, Movement, Modern

  Paul de Man (2013). “Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism”, p.164, Routledge

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• Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

  Ethan Coen

  Book, Reading, Cutting

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• There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.

  David Lehman

  Air, Lasts, Brooding

  David Lehman (1992). “Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man”, Poseidon Pr

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• David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet

  Isabella Rossellini

  Girl, Sorry, Blue

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• Everything is entertainment; criticism is now entertainment and it seems that the French directors have woken up one day and suddenly realised that they were not backed up any more.

  Wim Wenders

  One Day, Entertainment, Directors

  "'The culture of independent film criticism has gone down the drain'". Interview with Richard Phillips, www.wsws.org. January 10, 2000.

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• I believe in criticism.

  Paul Anka

  Believe, I Believe, I Believe In

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• You just never give up, no matter how hard the challenges are, and observe this world with a healthy dose of criticism and don't just follow the herd like somebody else might do.

  Renny Harlin

  Giving Up, Healthy, Challenges

  Interview with Kenneth Plume, www.ign.com. April 27, 2001.

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• Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.

  George Jean Nathan

  Art, Darkness, Unseen

  George Jean Nathan (1972). “The Critic and the Drama”, p.4, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

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• Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

  Tacitus

  Abuse, Irritated, Critics

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• The public is the only critic whose judgment is worth anything at all.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Editors, Literature

  "Life as I Find it".

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• 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.

  William Faulkner

  Art, Powerful, Writing

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• Now in reality, the world has paid too great a compliment to critics, and has imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

  Henry Fielding

  Reality, Men, World

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• 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!

  Laurence Sterne

  Hypocrite, Hypocrisy, Literature

  'Tristram Shandy' (1759-67) bk. 3, ch. 12

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• Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

  Karl Popper

  Myth

  In C. A. Mace (ed.) 'British Philosophy in the Mid-Century' 'The Philosophy of Science'

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• Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

  Emmet Fox

  Self, Indirect, Form

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• Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Confidence, Wisdom

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• Children do learn what they live. Then they grow up to live what they've learned.

  Dorothy Nolte

  Children, Kids, Parenting

  "Children Learn What They Live: Parenting to Inspire Values". Book by Dorothy Nolte and Rachel Harris, January 5, 1998.

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• Just let me go, we have to be able to criticize what we love, to say what we have to say 'cause if you're not trying to make something better, then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.

  Ani DiFranco

  Trying, Able, Way

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