William Styron Quotes About Critics

Quotes about: Critics

• Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation-who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him-but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope-qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.

  William Styron

  Writing, Past, Judging

  William Styron (2015). “My Generation: Collected Nonfiction”, p.417, Random House

• I think it's unfortunate to have critics for friends.

  William Styron

  Friends, Thinking, Critics

  William Styron, James L. W. West (1985). “Conversations with William Styron”, p.15, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• 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

  Writing, Men, Thinking

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