Critic Quotes

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

The only critic is a full house.

I don't need a critic to tell me I'm an actor. I make my own way. Nobody's my boss. Nobody's ever been my boss.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

I have never been a critic of science fiction as a whole.

I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.

Be a doer and not a critic.

All that a critic, as critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is.

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.

The Impossible Generalized Man today is the critic who believes in loving those unworthy of love as well as those worthy - yet believes this only insofar as no personal risk is entailed. Meaning he loves no one, worthy or no. This is what makes him impossible.

If I wasn't a film-maker, I'd be a film critic. It's the only thing I'd be qualified to do.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

A critic is a legless man who teaches running.

I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can't really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, I wanna grow up and be a critic.

In 1972 I married again, to Elisabeth Case; she continues to be wife, companion, critic and editor: a partner in the projects and programs that we undertake.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

It doesn't matter if a critic pans or praises my movies, I am only concerned about that one audience member and what their experience is.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

How dare anyone, parent, schoolteacher, or merely literary critic, tell me not to act colored.

One forgives the critic - perhaps - but never the good-natured friend.

The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.

Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.