George Orwell Quotes

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

Ezra Pound was a crackpot on social and political issues, but he knew what he was talking about in matters of the written language.

Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Oh, I'm a pretty bad poet. This has been corroborated by others.

Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Not even the severest critics of Jeffrey Archer can deny his style.

I disagree with everything John Updike has ever said.

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

The usual bad poem in somebody's Collected Works is a learned, mannered, valued habit, a habit a little more careful than, and little emptier than, brushing one's teeth.

Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.

Early influences included Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Charles Baxter, Richard Ford, Alice Munro, Denis Johnson - writers who are important to me still and who I discovered through my teachers.

I'm really into short-story collections and essays; they're my jam.

Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.

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.

I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think.

Men of great talents, whether poets or historians, seldom escape the attacks of those who, without ever favoring the world with any production of their own, take delight in criticising the works of others.

Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line.

What I teach is literary criticism and comparative literature and so on and that's my function, but from time to time it's possible for me actually to help a writer. I read something and something strikes me then, I feel I can talk to that writer about it.

Women excel more in literary judgment than in literary production,--they are better critics than authors.

Very nice couplet, although there are dull stretches.

Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.

I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry.