Criticism Quotes

I love subtextual film criticism, especially when it’s fun, when a guy knows how to write in a readable, charming way. What I love the most about it is that it doesn’t have a f'ing thing to do with what the writer or the actor or the filmmakers intended. It just has to work. And if you can make your case with as few exceptions as possible, then that’s great.

Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticise me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you.

There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 20 those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

Writers awaiting feedback are in a very vulnerable position. Yes, yes, we have to have thick skin but writers are sensitive, let’s face it. This is not a new toilet we have installed; our stories are our hearts.

If you are an adult you want something surprising, savoury, sharp, unusual, cosmopolitan, alien, challenging, complex, ambiguous, possibly even slightly disturbing and wrong.

Criticism should always leave people with the feeling that they have been helped.

It is foolish to reject criticism. In order to improve, we need to know what is lacking.

Most academics know how to take something apart, but not how to assemble it.

You can't let praise or criticism get to you.
It's a weakness to get caught up in either one.

If you keep your feathers well oiled the water of criticism will run off as from a duck's back.

But can we go to posterity with a sheaf of loose pages, or ask the readers of those days, with the whole of literature before them, to sift our enormous rubbish heaps for our tiny pearls? Such are the questions which the critics might lawfully put to their companions at table, the novelists and poets.

In light of God's judgment and justification of the sinner in the cross of Christ, we can begin to discover how to deal with any and all criticism. I can face any criticism man may lay against me. In other words, no one can criticize me more than the cross already has.

In light of God's judgment and justification of the sinner in the cross of Christ, we can begin to discover how to deal with any and all criticism. I can face any criticism man may lay against me. In other words, no one can criticize me more than the cross already has.

Perhaps because 'dry' comedy is so much more rare and odd than 'dry' wit, there are people who never much cared for [Buster] Keaton. Those who do cannot care mildly.

In a way his pictures are like a transcendent juggling act in which it seems that the whole universe is in exquisite flying motion and the one point of repose is the juggler's effortless, uninterested face.

Will you tell me my fault, frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince, than die. Men do not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, Sir.

The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.