Critic Quotes
You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.
Theophile Gautier
Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.
Nat King Cole
If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?
Christian Slater
Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.
John Keats
I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.
James Whistler
A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.
Kenneth Tynan
I find you write with one person in mind. Usually for me that one person is my wife, because she's my most severe critic and understands best what I'm trying to do.
Jonathan Carroll
The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic.
Kenneth Tynan
I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.
Jennifer Weiner
I am a Zionist, an ardent supporter of Israel, its defender when I deem Israel to be right and its critic when I deem it to be wrong.
Theodore Bikel
Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.
Raymond Chandler
I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.
Harold Bloom
I've been a critic of the antiglobalization movement, and they've been a critic of me, but the one thing I respect about the movement is their authentic energy. These are not people who don't care about the world.
Thomas Friedman
More negatives write than call. It's a cheap shot for me to go on the air with the critical letters or E-mail I get because the reaction of the listeners is always an instantaneous expression of sympathy for me and contempt for the poor critic.
John Hall
I never met anybody in my life who says, I want to be a critic. People want to be a fireman, poet, novelist.
Leslie Fiedler
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
David Herbert Lawrence
Asking a critic to name his favorite book is like asking a butcher to name his favorite pig.
John McCarthy