George Bernard Shaw Quotes

No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

I found nothing really wrong with this autobiography except poor choice of subject.

If you read, you'll judge.

I started rereading 'The Dutchman' - I kind of just pulled it off the shelf.

The best critics do not worry about what the author might think. That would be like a detective worrying about what a suspect might think. Instead, they treat the reader as an intelligent friend, and describe the book as honestly, and as entertainingly, as possible.

What I am best at is reading a book and then writing a critical essay.

A week or so ago I did a two hour book review in Baltimore Maryland.

The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.

I love to read. And right now I'm on my last hundred pages of 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen, and I really enjoyed it. His writing is just - he's one of those writers where you just go, 'There are people just meant to be novel writers.'

How much of a book review is about the reviewer? Sometimes it's mostly about the reviewer!

I have read your book and much like it.

A reviewer's lot is not always an easy one. I can remember flogging myself to finish Harold Brodkey's 'The Runaway Soul' despite the novel's consummate, unmitigated tedium.

I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings.

It's nice when critics say 'Emperor of the Air' is an important book of stories.

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.

The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron,” Sebastian said approvingly. “Excellent choice.” “You have read this?” Alexei asked. “It’s not as good as Miss Davenport and the Dark Marquis, of course, but worlds better than Miss Sainsbury and the Mysterious Colonel.” Harry found himself rendered speechless. “I’m reading Miss Truesdale and the Silent Gentleman right now.” “Silent?” Harry echoed. “There is a noticeable lack of dialogue,” Sebastian confirmed.

It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.

A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever.

In working towards ways of reading Mann, so that his own advances in suggesting new perspectives will become more vivid, I do some fairly standard philosophical analysis of ideas in Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

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.

In company with people of your own trade you ordinarily speak of other writers' books. The better the writers the less they will speak about what they have written themselves. Joyce was a very great writer and he would only explain what he was doing to jerks. Other writers that he respected were supposed to be able to know what he was doing by reading it.

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

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.