Reviewers Quotes

• Whenever a text-book is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. It it were easy, the book ought to be burned.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Education, Real, Book

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• Critics should find meaningful work.

  John Grisham

  Meaningful, Should, Critics

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• I picture several reviewers of my own books as passing a long future lodged between Brutus and Judas in the jaws of Satan.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Book, Long, Brutus

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.9, W. W. Norton & Company

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• As long as there are readers to be delighted with calumny, there will be found reviewers to calumniate.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Long, Calumny, Found

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1834). “Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions”, p.41

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• The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable.

  Carroll O'Connor

  Artist, Enemy, Scientism

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• If reviewers don't mention your work, it's probably better than if they do.

  Roger Deakins

  Working It, Ifs

  "Cinematography Roundtable: Roger Deakins and 5 Other Top DPs on Angelina Jolie's Directing Style, Shooting Through Hurricanes and Film vs. Digital". Interview with Gregg Kilday and Carolyn Giardina, www.hollywoodreporter.com. December 2, 2014.

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• I would be far more critical than any reviewer could be of my own work. So I simply don't read them.

  John Banville

  Would Be, Critical, My Own

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• Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.

  Tibor Fischer

  Book, Reviews, Wells

  "Better than Amis?" by Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2003.

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• Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

  John Steinbeck

  Giving, Unqualified, Praise

  "The Affluent Society". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Introduction, 1977.

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• What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.

  Tom Robbins

  Evil, Mind, Trying

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• I don't usually read my reviews. I've noticed older reviewers are much more bothered by the plot complications. Younger reviews don't seem to be bothered by the complications at all.

  Heidi Julavits

  Plot, Reviews, Complication

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I have no trouble publishing in Soviet astrophysical journals, but my work is unacceptable to the American astrophysical journals.
  [Referring to the trouble he had with the peer reviewers of Anglo-American astrophysical journals because his ideas often conflicted with the generally accepted or “standard"” theories.]

  Hannes Alfven

  Ideas, Peers, Conflict

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• Because, as we know, almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough. This will be especially impressed on anyone who has written fantastic fiction. He will find reviewers, both favourable and hostile, reading into his stories all manner of allegorical meanings which he never intended. (Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own books have been so ingenious and interesting that I often wish I had thought of them myself.)

  C. S. Lewis

  Reading, Book, Interesting

  C. S. Lewis (1964). “Reflections on the Psalms”, p.107, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• No man's thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Cheer, Writing, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.272, Simon and Schuster

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• Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist has to please his audience.

  V. S. Pritchett

  People, Academic, Used

  "V. S. Pritchett" by Paul Theroux, archive.nytimes.com. May 22, 1977.

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• I do not believe writers should read reviews of their own books, and I do not. If one is not careful one is soon writing to please reviewers and not their audience or themselves.

  Louis L'Amour

  Believe, Book, Writing

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• In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a high point. He’ll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can’t figure out whether the hero’s laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff—a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to do his job. And I’m not lazy, whatever else I am. I’ll tell you everything.

  Jim Thompson

  Girl, Running, Jobs

  Jim Thompson (1997). “Crime novels: American noir of the 1950s”

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• Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

  Harold Clurman

  Powerful, Believe, People

  Harold Clurman (1983). “The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the Thirties”, p.100, Da Capo Press

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• I think testing films are a great tool. And I think showing them to people that you value their opinion is important, but once you give over to what reviewers think, that's tricky. You don't know what their agenda is; it's so subjective. You have got to make sure you are asking someone's opinion who you know.

  Bradley Cooper

  Thinking, People, Giving

  "In Conversation With Bradley Cooper". Interview with Askmen, me.askmen.com.

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• I couldn't give a sh*t what they have to say. As soon as I go home and see my husband James Thornton of Holby Blue fame and pick up my dog and cuddle him, that's all that matters. I couldn't care if some theatre reviewer thinks my American accent sounds a bit Welsh.

  Joanna Page

  Dog, Husband, Home

  "Joanna Page: 'Within minutes of meeting James Corden, you'll want to sleep with him'". Interview, www.mirror.co.uk. June 13, 2008.

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• My constant fear as a writer as that I will fail to convey the gravity of living. I know that to some degree that sets me up as boorish, but I'll have to live with that, and, honestly, I'd rather err on the side of being "unredeemingly dark," as one reviewer said about blood kin, than on keeping to the sunny side.

  Mark Powell

  Dark, Blood, Sides

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• If you read reviews that you think by their very nature are not respectful of the actresses involved or not appreciating the work as it should be, I think you should write to reviewers or comment and say, "Are you kidding me?"

  Romola Garai

  Writing, Thinking, Appreciate

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• The critics and the reviewers are more frightening than anything else!

  Ayana Mathis

  Critics, Frightening

  "Twelve Tribes of Hattie Author Ayana Mathis Talks Fiction, Family, and (Sometimes) Faking It". Interview with Meredith Turits, www.glamour.com. December 17, 2012.

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• Reviewers do not read books with much care . . . their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Ignorance, Stupidity

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• Religion embarrasses the commentators. It is offbounds. An editor of the old Life magazine once assigned me a book on religion with remark that I was the only 'religious nut' - his term for a believer - in his stable of regular reviewers.

  Garry Wills

  Christian, Religious, Book

  Garry Wills (2013). “Under God”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

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