Peter Carey Quotes

A bad review is like baking a cake with all the best ingredients and having someone sit on it.

It's kind of hard to spend long hours trying to help people and then find out that the favorite game of the columnist is to sit back and second guess you and try to find something that you did wrong.

One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work.

I'm totally fine with people criticizing me in shows... people like this show, or don't; you're entitled to your opinion. But when people are criticizing you as a person, I have to say it's a little bit different.

People are going to bash you while you're alive, and they're going to bash you when you're gone.

With every interview you feel like you lose a piece of yourself, and with every bad review you become just that little bit more bitter. It is horrible in a way.

Politics is like getting a really bad review: a stinker that you know all your friends are reading.

Some people hate the sight of me as soon as they see me on television. They loathe the look of me, and I accept that from the days of variety. I would walk on and some people would open a newspaper and think, 'He's first on, so he can't be any good.' I accept that.

If you get anything done, you will be criticized

No matter what I do, you're going to be upset by something.

I would play like one minute or not even get in at all. I'd see on Twitter - people would say, 'I hate that Grayson Allen guy at the end of the bench.' I'm like, 'What did I do?! I was in the game for 30 seconds.'

When I was 14 or 15, I was in a small troupe for teenagers, and I heard somebody say, 'Oh, she'll never get anywhere. She's too common.'

Getting booed off, definitely not the best feeling.

It is soul-destroying to have your work and physical appearance picked to pieces.

Renowned people from all fields receive unnecessary flak so often. Anonymity is misused, and it is a terrible thing to want to break somebody's spirit.

I've always been faced with all kinds of criticism. People were saying, 'Oh, Shaggy is pop. He can't do dancehall,' even though I came from dancehall.

You're trying your damndest, you strike out and they boo you. I act like it doesn't bother me, like I don't hear anything the fans say, but the truth is I hear every word of it and it kills me.

I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me.

I thought you were sane," I said, "but you're just as crazy as the rest of them.

He is a man whom it is impossible to please, because he is never pleased with himself.

I lead by example. But if I get pissed enough, I'll say something. It usually isn't rah-rah; it's more complaining.

Sometimes if I'm not playing well on stage, I'll purposely play even worse; I'll tear it apart, because I'm so disgusted with what I'm playing that I'll go the wrong route: instead of trying to make it better, I'll go the other way and really make myself sound bad. Which is a kind of a strange outlook I suppose, really.

You may be frustrated with religion, but don't take that out on God.

I am a failure as a writer. The publishers won't publish me, the bookshops won't carry my books, the critics won't write about me. I am excluded from all anthologies, and completely ignored.

Sandry: "There has to be something we can do." Lark: "We're mages. We do what we can, but some problems are too big to fix." Sandry: "Then I wish I weren't a mage. What good is magic, if you can't use it to help people.