Michelle Dean Quotes

All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.

To appreciate a work of art, is it okay to like what you like, and the heck with the art critics and experts? Absolutely.

The critic should describe, and not prescribe.

Critics at their best are independent voices; people take seriously their responsibility to see as many things as they can see, put them in the widest possible perspective, educate their readers. I really do think of myself as a teacher.

It's a good question, because a movie isn't good or bad based on its politics. It's usually good or bad for other reasons, though you might agree or disagree with its politics.

What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant.

I think you have to judge everything based on your personal taste. And if that means being critical, so be it. I hate political correctness. I absolutely loathe it.

I never want to be in a position where I have to defend my material. It's too subjective. It's for other people to defend or not defend.

But you know, really, if you think about it Roger and I and all critics really have one absolute essential part of our credentials and that is that you believe that that is actually what we think.

I never read reviews of something I want to see.

I don't read reviews until after I'm done with a production, but when I do finally get to them, I'm always sort of floored by what the bad ones say.

You either like something, or you don't; you won't change your opinion because somebody explains why you should like it.

It's very easy for me to watch a performance and just speak on it as I see it.

I'm a trained engineer, so I'm conditioned to come up with a right answer to a difficult question, but when it comes to art, there is no definite answer because it's so subjective.

I tend to judge a piece of criticism by how smart I find the argument. This, I know,, is not how everyone does it.

If you ask my opinion, I don't look at a film according to its box office collection.

In my view, a review should be like talking to a friend who's just asked you, 'What was it like?' You're giving a verdict on an experience, not trying for a definitive last judgment.

Pedants make a great rout about criticism, as if it were a science of great depth, and required much pains and knowledge--criticism however is only the result of good sense, taste and judgment--three qualities that indeed seldom are found together, and extremely seldom in a pedant, which most critics are.

When I read the rules of criticism, I immediately inquire after the works of the author who has written them, and by that means discover what it is he likes in a composition.

Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that's horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it's nothing. It's just bibble-babble. It's like a fart in a wind tunnel, folks.

I am not a critic; to me criticism is so often nothing more than the eye garrulously denouncing the shape of the peephole that gives access to hidden treasure.

You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.

Nothing touches a work of art so little as criticism.

With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes.

I still found literary criticism to be a suspect activity