Literary Criticism Quotes

• Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Editors, Rejection

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

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• Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Book, Feelings, Criticism

  D. H. Lawrence, Bruce Steele (1985). “Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays”, p.209, Cambridge University Press

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• There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.66, Penguin

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• Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover either for grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much-cherished aspect of academic freedom.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Freedom, People, Criticism

  "H.L. Mencken: The Baltimore Oracle" by John Kenneth Galbraith, www.washingtonpost.com. September 14, 1980.

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• Literary criticism has about it neither rigour nor proof. Where it is honest, it is passionate, private experience seeking to persuade.

  George Steiner

  Criticism, Passionate, Honest

  George Steiner (1987). “George Steiner: A Reader”, p.165, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of ''meanings.''

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Revenge, Order

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• There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Reading, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred R. Ferguson (1965). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838”, p.233, Harvard University Press

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• In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.

  George Orwell

  Art, Writing, Math

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.161, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Philosophy, Serenity, Philosopher

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people readingfor the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Reading, Mean

  Georg Brand, Virginia Woolf, Koizumi Yakumo, Hernández Felisberto (2017). “ON READING: Le plaisir de lire”, p.43, Pieffe Edizioni via PublishDrive

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• Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

  Walter Benjamin

  Girl, Baby, Book

  Walter Benjamin (2016). “One-Way Street”, p.50, Harvard University Press

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• Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.

  T. S. Eliot

  Poetry, Personality, Individual Talent

  The Sacred Wood "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)

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• Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Art, Clever, Mean

  "Letters to a Young Poet". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke. Letter Three (April 23, 1903), 1929.

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• In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

  John Steinbeck

  Choices, Criticism, Attention

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.47, Penguin

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• ... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us to break her and bullyher, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.

  Virginia Woolf

  Art, Criticism, And Love

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.12, Oxford University Press

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• The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.

  Clifford Geertz

  Criticism, Research, Persuasive

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• Literary criticism is generally bunk. Nonsense. Usually based on self-serving post-intellectual bullshit.

  John Fante

  Self, Bullshit, Intellectual

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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

  Criticism, Too Much, Kind

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• You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Character, Kids, Thinking

  Ernest Hemingway (2008). “The Good Life According to Hemingway”, Ecco

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• Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

  Philip Larkin

  Poetry, Wordsworth, Deprivation

  Reply to question "Do you think people go around feeling they haven't got out of life what life has to offer?"- Required Writing (1983) p. 47

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• Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Mean, Expression

  The Sacred Wood "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)

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• Strict rules of evidence would destroy psychoanalysis and literary criticism.

  Mason Cooley

  Criticism, Evidence, Strict

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• I still found literary criticism to be a suspect activity

  Alison Bechdel

  Criticism, Found, Stills

  Alison Bechdel (2007). “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic”, p.202, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

  Louis Aragon

  Book, People, Style

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• The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Strong, Hate

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