Quote

Most of us live for the critic, and he lives on us. He doesn't sacrifice himself. He gets so much a line for writing a criticism. If the birds should read the newspapers, they would all take to changing their notes. The parrots would exchange with the nightingales, and what a farce it would be!

Critics should be looked at simply as commentators.

Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

Perhaps it would be better for science, that all criticism should be avowed.

Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.

I don't know what to say about literary critics. I think it's probably best to say nothing.

To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.

I don't read critics, and I don't care what they say. You can't let them steal your soul. You do what the director and production is committed to doing. I just think it's terrible that critics have the power to keep people away from a good production.

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.