Quote

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.

Criticism really used to hurt me. Most of these critics are usually frustrated artists, and they criticise other people's art because they can't do it themselves. It's a really disgusting job. They must feel horrible inside.

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.

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

Artists teach critics what to think. Critics repeat what the artists teach them.

I think critics are very useful. But I think that they, in a way, betray their position when they stop people looking for themselves.

Critics have a responsibility to put things in a cultural and sociological or political context. That is important.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

I think that artists, at a certain point, can either become defiant and say that the audience is wrong, readers don't get them, and they're going to keep doing it their own way, or they can listen to the criticism - and not necessarily blindly follow the audience's requests and advice.