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When you're free of editorial control, you owe it to yourself to obtain feedback from friends and readers. Some take those criticisms to heart and incorporate it into their work, and some ignore them.

Have you ever noticed how most critics disagree with the public? That should tell you a lot about critics.

I have nothing but the highest regard for 'Salon' and its commitment to independent and provocative journalism.

It's not the journalists; it's the critics that I can't understand. I've never understood what kind of a person would want to criticize someone else's work.

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written.

Critics have a job to do. I understand that. It's not just to criticize. They're trying to interpret art for the public.

Art editors and critics - people like me - have become a courtier class.

I've learned not to attach personal feelings to critics who review your work. It's their opinions, their perceptions - it's a very subjective thing, and you can be hurt.

There's no end to the inventiveness of critics, I tell you. Because they can't write fiction, they put their impulse into their analysis of work.

When I started blogging in 2004, I responded to every comment no matter how nasty the reader was. I was generally polite, believing that these critics would be so charmed by my professionalism that they would see the error of their misogynist ways and swiftly run out to read a bell hooks book. Ha!