Some people insist that ‘mediocre’ is better than ‘best.’ They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can’t fly. They despise brains because they have none.

You should praise, criticize and flirt with people right to their face, only then it will make a difference.

Don’t give up the fight. Don’t dim out the light. Those who at first don’t believe in you, will soon begin to ask you “how did you do it?” Keep it up!

A critic can call any poem ‘doggerel.’ That is no more than a slur. ‘Doggerel’ or ‘maudlin’ or ‘sappy’ or ‘sentimental’ is in the ear of the listener. By the by, ‘sentimental’ is okay as...

Wealthy people attract critics like wealthy ships attract pirates.

I want to say to the literature teacher who remains wilfully, even boastfully ignorant of a major element of contemporary fiction: you are incompetent to teach or judge your subject. Readers and students who do...

The difference between critics and audiences is that one is a group of humans and one is not.

Flavour your life in such a way that anyone who thinks he or she is biting or back-biting you, will rather take smiles away unexpectedly and with surprises.

Those who write ill, and they who ne’er durst write,Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

There is nothing worse then being surrounded by a bunch of people telling you to do what is right, when they can’t define that definition, without a lot of hatred and judgment behind it.

I find that the critics of voluntary service are all too often those who are prepared to accept such services when they require them but deride them with cynicism and scepticism when they see others...

Don’t be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts.

Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.

Genius feels like an over extended Helium balloon about to burst, and everyone criticizes you for not having a conventional way of coping with it.

Magicians made magic but critics made it tricks.

Without self-discipline, your streams of grace become a flood of disgrace. Never let indiscipline weigh you down for critics to pick mockeries on.

Far from being a pack of baying butchers,critics sometimes have a perverse habit of tending to the sick and wounded on the cinematic field of battle, rushing in where angels fear to tread, even when...

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.

Is not a critic,” asks Professor Stoll, “… a judge, who does not explore his own consciousness, but determines the author’s meaning or intention, as if the poem were a will, a contract, or the...

The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.

Your writing can be chosen by one publisher and hated by all readers, or it can be rejected by one publisher and loved by all readers. Most of the time it’s somewhere in between, but...

We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating.

Critical voices have to care about history. We have to care about the way in which things get controlled in the past because that’s when the damage gets done and if we don’t keep that...

When dealing with critics always remember this: Critics judge things based on what is outside of their content of understanding.

Our critics make us strong!Our fears make us bold!Our haters make us wise!Our foes make us active!Our obstacles make us passionate!Our losses make us wealthy!Our disappointments make us appointed!Our unseen treasures give us aknown peace!Whatever...

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

I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the mot degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value–certainly no large value.

[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the day before in some library or other, and treats in heathenish fashion people at whose feet...

On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel...

You may face opposition not only because you are doing something wrong, but because you are doing something right. Not all oppositions are meant for a better life!

Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label — to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must...

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.

A critic is a man created to praise greater men than himself, but he is never able to find them.

Corporate irony not only ridicules the thing it is selling but the very act of selling it. In the process it disarms critics by making anyone who goes against the flow of commerce seem clueless.

My writing doesn’t improve if you think it’s great, and it doesn’t lessen if you think it sucks. Likewise, you not showing me love doesn’t mean mine for you has to be invisible. The two...

When you’re different, sometimes you don’t see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn’t.

I think there’s a ton of fear in the perception of romance in part because there’s something very realistic in great romance — namely, that women have the right to demand relationships that are based...

I am not perfect, but if I looked perfect to everyone I must have been rocking imperfect perfectly to a few imperfect souls that seek imperfection vs. perfection, in an imperfect world where God asks...

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually...

I am not writing for scholars or fellow critics, but for people who like to read, to look at pictures, and to know things.

I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever...

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Everyone else believes in you. The major problem is that not all can let you know as in the way you may wish. Some will only let you know through their tests of criticism!

A critic must be knowledgeable in several fields, practices, and mediums. Brushing off art that they personally don’t understand, is not a critique.

Those who lack the guts to create critic.

There is something essentially ridiculous about critics, anyway: what is good is good without our saying so, and beneath all our majesty we know this.

I don’t want to be a critic of the world. I want to encourage it.

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

Anaemia is an illness primarily affecting characters in novels.