John Dryden Quotes

Self-censorship is the most devastating thing for an artist.

Several times I drew a critical cartoon and then, at the last moment, stopped myself from putting it out in print. I thought it would be misunderstood, be a politically incorrect thing to do.

I really wouldn't censor myself. But because it was on such a slower scale, I would throw things out, and I indulged the personal stuff as little flashes of truth. Little in-jokes for anyone who was paying particular attention.

I don't care about my "impact" - I only care about the theater as an art form and criticism as an act of writing.

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways.

When one writer tries to silence another, he silences every writer-and in the end he also silences himself.

Writers do the self-censoring before they even get to the studio executive, because they know the film will not run that gauntlet. They, because they want to get their films made, they censor it.

If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

Talented people have to do what they do. Someone can criticize but you do what you do.

I tend to get a little quirkier and crazier with my lyrics and come from a different angle when I'm writing for myself.

More and more in the art world are becoming moralistic, telling artists and critics what they should and shouldn't write, do, or make art about. Never mind the intellectual hypocrisy of this: Those who violate the clublike code are made out to be wrong, immoral, corrupt.

There's a lovely freedom of will when you approach a character that no one has really come across before, because it is your own interpretation.

Censorship is not an occupation that attracts intelligent, subtle minds. Censors can and often have been outwitted. But the game of slipping Aesopian messages past the censor is ultimately a sterile one, diverting writers from their proper task.

In the thirties a whole school of criticism bogged down intellectually in those agitprop, social-realistic days. A play had to be progressive. A number of plays by playwrights who were thought very highly of then - they were very bad playwrights - were highly praised because their themes were intellectually and politically proper. This intellectual morass is very dangerous, it seems to me. A form of censorship.

If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

I don't feel that censorship keeps me from doing the work, though. I'm my bigger censor.

The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside

Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism!

How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show - it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.

Such expression is impossible in a cramped atmosphere. As I have no desire to offer civil disobedience I cannot write freely. As the author of satyagraha I cannot, consistently with my profession, suppress the vital part of myself for the sake of being able to write on permissible subjects. ... It would be like dealing with the trunk without the head.

The most accomplished literary work would be reduced to nothing by carping criticism, if the author would listen to all critics and allow every one to erase the passage which pleases him the least.

there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!

In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.