Richard Dawkins Quotes

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.

'The Woman on the Train' just didn't sound as good. I'll take care next time not to have 'girl' in the title.

Because I have been so pigheaded and so selfish about so many things for so many years, I've spent a lot of time being, like, 'That person needs to change. This person needs to change.'

I sometimes think there is nothing really to be said about a novel but 'read the book.' I have a jaundiced view of literary critics.

This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast.

There's an enormous difference between being a critic and a reviewer. The reviewer reacts to the experience of that book.

What with the reviews of critics, the sarcasms of one's friends, the reproaches of one's own taste, there's precious little peace after publishing a book.

[On Lou Tellegen's Women Have Been Kind:] The book ... has all the elegance of a quirked little finger and all the glitter of a pair of new rubbers.

People who criticize The Selfish Gene like that often haven't read it. The selfish gene accounts for altruism toward kin and individuals who might be in a position to reciprocate your altruism.

So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying [thrusts a middle finger into the air] this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising.

I hate to ask about the title, because it makes it seem like that is all I've read of the book.

The worst letters come from retired high school English teachers. They will literally take a book and pick it to pieces and send me 14 pages of notes.

It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book.

There's a great book about that, "The Breaking Point" by Stephen Koch . It won't improve your opinion of [Ernest] Hemingway.

...Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most.

If on your own or by the criticism of others you discover error in your work, correct it then and there; otherwise in exposing your work to the public, you will expose your error also.

A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.

I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise.

I'm my own biggest critic, and the only way I'm going to improve is to see what I was doing wrong.

When you talk yourself, you think how witty, how original, how acute you are; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only - What a crib from Rochefoucauld!

Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

Every Day Is for the Thief, by turns funny, mournful, and acerbic, offers a portrait of Nigeria in which anger, perhaps the most natural response to the often lamentable state of affairs there, is somehow muted and deflected by the author's deep engagement with the country: a profoundly disenchanted love. Teju Cole is among the most gifted writers of his generation.

I must congratulate myself, in passing, for never having lost the ability to examine my conscience, never having lost the gift of finding myself wanting & defective. Why fear the criticism of others when you, yourself, are first out of the critical gate? If self-denigration is the race I am the winner, even before the starting gun. Collect the bets.