When you receive criticism from well-meaning people, it pays to ask, ‘Are they right?’ And if they are, you need to adapt what they’re doing. If they’re not right, if you really have conviction that they’re not right, you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It’s a key part of invention.

I have tonight begun reading a stupid, shitty book by Kerouac called Big Sur, and I would give a ball to wake up tomorrow on some empty ridge with a herd of beatniks grazing in the clearing about 200 yards below the house. And then to squat with the big boomer and feel it on...

People have boldness to criticize but not to sensitize.

I only accept and pay attention to feedback from people who are also in the arena. If you’re occasionally getting your butt kicked as you respond, and if you’re also figuring out how to stay open to feedback without getting pummeled by insults, I’m more likely to pay attention to your thought about my work....

My only criticism is that there is too much weight loss in the first two weeks. When it goes into the other phases of the diet, it is OK.

The aim is to love God because the pure heart loves loving God and because the true mind knows He deserves it. Unlike the accusations and beliefs of the critics and skeptics, it is neither an obligation of duty; nor a fear of damnation; nor a wish for power; nor a desire to appear more...

Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. The trouble is that very few of their laborious explanations stick in the memory. The mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit. … Again...

A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope.

Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things.

In his book Real Presences, George Steiner asks us to “imagine a society in which all talk about the arts, music and literature is prohibited.” In such a society there would be no more essays on whether Hamlet was mad or only pretending to be, no reviews of the latest exhibitions or novels, no profiles...

Dare to risk public criticism.

A great truth wants to be criticized not idolized

I’ve had trouble with criticism, I guess. It’s hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them.

When it comes to the crusty behavior of some people, give them the benefit of the doubt. They may be drowning right before your eyes, but you can’t see it. And you’d never ask someone to drown with a smile on his face.

Criticism is going to come while you’re injured, but you just have to work through it, stay mentally tough … I think he has something to prove this year.

Nothing ruins a good thing quite like knowing you share your opinions with mindless little tits.

The net has provided a level playing field for criticism and comment – anyone and everyone is entitled to their opinion – and that is one of its greatest strengths.

Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.

If on the other hand we found even one reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and reread it, who would notice, and object, if a single word were changed, then, however little we could see...

Criticism at its best is re-creative, not spirit-killing.

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

The negativity, it’s hard to talk about that. I don’t think he deserves all the criticism he’s received this past week.

I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for… Criticism must think of itself...

Matthew Arnold was a fastidious social critic and hence an accomplished complainer. When he died, an acquaintance said: “Poor Matt, he’s going to Heaven, no doubt – but he won’t like God.

Thence it is possible to arrive by easy stages at the happy notion, not uncommon among ‘intellectuals’, that taste consists of distaste, and that the loftiest of pleasures is that of feeling displeased; and thus to end by enjoying almost nothing in literature but one’s own opinions, while oneself incapable of writing a living sentence.

The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.

You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything

If yourhands are tied towardsanyone who’s in need ofa helping hand, let yourtangue also be tied

Anaemia is an illness primarily affecting characters in novels.

There is a common tendency to turn off one’s imagination at certain points and refuse to contemplate the possibility of having to do certain things and cope with the attendant moral problems. The things simply get done by the social machine, and one can keep one’s clear conscience and one’s moral indignation unsullied.

As uncomfortable as it might be, I refuse to let the comfort of being agreed with suffocate my opinions.

Had she any respect for him at all, his words would’ve affected her. But no value accompanies comments spewed from the mouth of a brute.

…like the emperor striding confidently along without clothes, convinced by them and their inward monitions that their criticism is effecting changes in society.

Can anyone capable of genuinely appreciating Mozart and Mizoguchi possibly say that he is not, in that respect, immeasurably better off than someone whose cultural horizon is limited to bingo and The Black and White Minstrel Show? The assimilation will not necessarily make him a better person (a common, and obviously fallacious, assumption), but it...

This kind can come forth by nothing but prayer and fasting.” Is there a Christian in the whole world who would believe such a story if found in any other book?The trouble is, these pious people shut up their reason, and then open their Bible.

(Feedback) People become addicted to it. That’s why journalism is so popular, because you want to hear, every day, what people think of what you just wrote. I think a little patience on that front can be good, too.

Relax and breathe. The trouble with imaginative people is that we’re good at picturing the worst that could happen to us. Fear is often just the imagination taking a wrong turn. Bad criticism is not the end of the world. As far as I know, no one has ever died from a bad review. Take...

One does not have the right to criticize until he can do the same work without being criticized

Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.

We shall, as we ripen in grace, have greater sweetness towards our fellow Christians. Bitter-spirited Christians may know a great deal, but they are immature. Those who are quick to censure may be very acute in judgment, but they are as yet very immature in heart. He who grows in grace remembers that he is...

The best people are always the worst. They drive everyone mad by being so good at second-guessing everything bad.

Intelligent people, as some say, in their openness, are indeed slow to criticize, but conversely, in their openness to the concerns of others, the genuine are slow to fret about being criticized.

It’s inimical to be critical without being constructive

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

In one’s relationship with dogs and with a newsroom, a generous amount of praise and encouragement goes much better than criticism.

The aim of language…is to communicate…to impart to others the results one has obtained…As I talk, I reveal the situation…I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it.

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.

I’m not interested in the reviews by critics over the age of 15.

It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man’s oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it’s place is a work extremely troublesome.