Channing Pollock Quotes

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

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

How well he's read, to reason against reading!

The critic should describe, and not prescribe.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

A good novelist pays attention to his characters. A good biographer pays attention to the documents before her. A good critic pays close attention to the thing she's brought to evaluate.

[Hawthorne''s] pious blame is a chuckle of praise all the while.

The most useless job in the world is that of the critic. That is a prejudiced statement. I admit it. I'm prejudiced. I hate critics. ... And now, as the saying goes (yesterday, I couldn't even spell critik), and now I are one.

REVIEW, v.t. To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it./ Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)/ At work upon a book, and so read out of it/ The qualities that you have first read into it.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Seeing someone else perform and letting me be the critic for once... that's not a bad thing.

Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.

The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.

But the truth is that critics are by definition critical. That's their job.

I was an English major, so I love discussing possibilities and alternate theories.

Marilyn Manson is a criticism of gimmickry, while being itself a gimmick.

What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.

If people aren't creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticize.

If you would judge, understand.

I don't delve too deep into reviews.

I don't read the critics.

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.