Critical Perspective Quotes

I always see what’s... wrong. Would you want that? When I see a car or a rocket or spacecraft, I only see what’s wrong. I never see what’s right. It’s not a recipe for happiness.

The public knows that human beings are fallible. Only people blinded by ideology fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility.

I was inherently slightly more bitter or cynical and that kept me from going to the commercial formulaic crowd. Also, I went to an art college and I did my foundation in art.

The true work of a critic is not to make his hearer believe him, but agree with him.

There's a fine line between cultural criticism and bitterness.

I have been lucky that some critics joined the mob in loving something I've done, or in appreciating it. I've been lucky. But most of the critics don't like what the people like. I think they have a very strange job, and they are meant to criticize.

In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.

I've always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it.

I think young people really do care. They want to build their life on something that's solid and makes sense, that's rational, that's not built on mythology, make-believe and wishful thinking.

It is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects.

A critic is a necessary evil, and criticism is an evil necessity.

Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!

Friends see most of each other’s flaws. Spouses see every awful last bit.

When you look at this, I think that there's been such a hard push on this. The reason they're called DREAMers is because that's the most sympathetic term that could be applied to among all of these DREAMers, there are some awfully bad people. And these dreamers go on to the age of 37 or 38 or maybe older.

To be a contrarian, you've got to be a contrarian against your own people.

The function of criticism should not be confused with the function of reform.

Critics stopped being relevant when they stopped writing to inform and contextualize, and when they started writing to signal who they are, to display their identity by their stance on what they are writing about. Criticism should never be about the critic, but thats what it has become, and that’s why no one cares about them anymore.

He who best knows the world will love it least.

I appreciate good criticism and I think it's really important. I don't like it when it's consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature. I've written some criticism, and I really enjoy it because I think it's important for people to know that theatre is vital. Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power of the Times is discouraging. It's killing new plays, demolishing one after another.

It's so easy to criticize your own time, and I see that as a problem, even for myself, as a listener.

I think that if a person doesn't feel cynical then they're out of phase with the 20th century. Being cynical is the only way to deal with modern civilization - you can't just swallow it whole.

For the critic, criticism is a form of natural self-expression, as poetry is to the poet. So, for a critic, criticism is a true thing. Criticism isn’t written for poets, it’s written for other readers. One hopes it is true for other readers if it’s true for oneself.

A critic at best is a waiter at the great table of literature.

I don't feel any real animosity towards critics when they write negative things. I think some are more perceptive than others. Some are very knowledgeable about painting. But it isn't something I have any influence over, so there isn't any point in worrying about it.

You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.