Arts Criticism Quotes

What is needed in the theater, in fact for all our art forms, is a vibrant critical tradition.

The trouble with the opera is there's always to much singing.

I know that the arts are important. I'm not denying that, but I can't associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index.

I was the only BBC graduate trainee in 1961 interested in arts broadcasting. I knew I wanted to write, and I had to make a living.

An arts degree is like a diploma in origami. And about as much use.

I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how to become a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

Virgil Thomson, the great classical music critic, who was also a composer, but said that criticism was the only antidote he knew to pay publicity. 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. Newspapers that don't carry arts criticism at all while not fulfill this function. And probably their arts journalism will be deprived as a result.