Jean de la Bruyere Quotes

Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Criticism is something that you have to take, regardless of what you do. Even if you go out there and try to make the most vanilla, non-offensive TV show possible, people are going to criticize you for doing that. It's just part of the game.

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

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony.

Literature, of course, is not a contest.

When you're in a songwriting class, and you write a song, and you hand it in to a teacher to grade, I'm still going to say that it's a really awesome song whether I got an A or a D. I learned to stick to my guns and take the tools as tools and not as rules.

The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

Either you live by the barometer of the music critics, or you live by your own. I choose the latter.

At the end, we can embrace and love whatever we want of an author's work. But we also can't ignore a writer's express wish just because we don't happen to agree with it.

It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards.

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

I don't want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money.

It is impossible for authors to discover beauties in one another's works; they have eyes only for spots and blemishes.

Unfortunately most criticism is by poseurs. They use their comments about someone else's work as a platform on which to strike poses. What they're really saying is: "Look at me! Look at me!"

Don't be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts.

Critics are more committed to the rules of art than artists are.

I think it's good when people don't write good things about your work. I mean, what a great compliment it is to be called a charlatan.

[People] want me to finish things. But I see them in such a way and paint them accordingly. ... Nothing is simpler than to complete pictures in a superficial sense. Never does one lie so cleverly as then.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, 'Oh, I don't like it.' One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not sometimes be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality.