Patrick Kavanagh Quotes

In my estimation, the only thing that is more to be guarded against than bad taste is good taste.

The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor.

I don't try to guess what a million people will like. It's hard enough to know what I like.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony.

I never set out to make a movie that was everything to everybody; if that were the case, we could all just take a picture of a tree and agree that the tree is beautiful and move on with our lives. I wouldn't even need to show up.

One of the disconcerting things about writing for publication is that you're trying to clear your little parcel of land in a field where Taste is king - and, as we all know, there's no accounting for Taste.

Critics are not creators. They rarely write great novels, invent new technologies, or come up with a great business idea.

For no art and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with the other faculties.

If people like something you've done - or don't like it - this shouldn't determine what you write or how you write it. Those are two separate things entirely: your work and the world's response to it.

Definitely, 'True Detective' was a great example of one director, one story. It worked fantastically well. Well, I thought it worked fantastically well; I know a lot people didn't.

You have to have really thick skin. Art is obviously there to be criticized and there to be taken in different ways. Not everyone is going to like what you do.

Criticism, maybe cynicism, is just rampant in music, in creativity. Everybody has a perception and a set of opinions based on what that piece of music is doing to them internally.

The best critic needn't be right, just interesting.

The thing about creativity is, people are going to laugh at it. Get over it.

In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.

I don't think I was ever thinking critically about my aesthetic, I think it's enough when you're little just to understand that you can give yourself the permission to try and see things differently or create something original, even though you probably won't make anything original for a really long time.

Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don't let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." Good to remember.

Anybody is qualified, according to everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chemistry and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But then these are more serious things.

If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered "dangerous" but set in place in their compartmental understandings.

I'm not trying to explain other cultures, or to give a fair and balanced account of a country, or the top ten things you need to know. I'm not trying to spread world peace and understanding. I'm not an advocate or an activist or an educator or a journalist. I'm out there trying to tell stories the best I can.

The true work of a critic is not to make his hearer believe him, but agree with him.

I couldn't write a political song. There's just opinion; it's all arbitrary anyway. It's all subjective.

When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.