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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.

If you have too good a time writing hostile reviews, you'll injure not only your sensibility but your soul.

When you get a bad review, you hate the writer. It's very painful; whoever says the opposite lies. It's humiliating. Sometimes it comes from an honest place, but most times, it comes from a desire to trash someone.

As far as criticism, I don't mind critics. I mean, I wrote for 'Rolling Stone' for a hot minute. I like criticism. I enjoy criticism. The thing I don't like is cruelty for cruelty's sake. You don't have to be a jerk to say something negative. You can say something in the negative sense and have class.

People frequently ask me if adverse criticism bothers me. I've had a lot of it, and I have been able to shrug most of it off.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

I'm honest about expressing my opinions. At the same time, I'm diplomatic in how I do critique things if I have a negative response.

Over the years, during television interviews, whenever the host or the reviewer or whoever gets cynical and nasty with me, I will behave accordingly. I will defend myself.

As authors, we all expect criticism from time to time, and we all have our ways of coping with unfriendly reviews.

I don't let negative criticism, for the most part, bother me.