Critics Quotes - Page 14

• One critic wrote . . . that my poems sounded as though they had been translated from the Hungarian. I don't know why, but somehow that made me feel quite lighthearted.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Made, Feels, Knows

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• It's often the case that when a critic uses an embarrassingly accurate term to describe what a wrong-doer is doing, the wrong-doer protests: "Why don't you use my white-washed, conscience-soothing euphemism?" Such euphemisms, they claim, help promote "civilized debate."

  Steve Kangas

  White, Use, Doers

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• The galleries are full of critics. They play no ball, they fight no fights. They make no mistakes because they attempt nothing. Down in the arena are the doers. They make mistakes because they try many things. The man who makes no mistakes lacks boldness and the spirit of adventure. He is the one who never tries anything. His is the brake on the wheel of progress. And yet it cannot be truly said he makes no mistakes, because his biggest mistake is the very fact that he tries nothing, does nothing, except criticize those who do things.

  David M. Shoup

  Mistake, Adventure, Fighting

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• No publisher should ever express an opinion of the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide.

  Oscar Wilde

  Matter, Opinion, Should

  Letter in 'St James's Gazette' 28 June 1890

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• Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.

  Jean Cocteau

  Unique, Firsts, Hated

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• Critics are eunuchs at a gang bang.

  George Burns

  Bangs, Gang, Eunuchs

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• Don't respond to negativity with more negativity. Just put your head down and prove your critics wrong.

  Frank Sinatra

  Negativity, Down And, Prove

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• Your harshest critic is always going to be yourself. Don't ignore that critic, but don't give it more attention than it deserves.

  Michael Ian Black

  Being Yourself, Giving, Attention

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The critics don't interest me because they're concerned with what's past and done, while I'm concerned with what comes next.

  Aldous Huxley

  Past, Done, Next

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• Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don't put them on paper.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Talking, Editors

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.31, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• All art critics are useless or harmful.

  Umberto Boccioni

  Art, Useless, Art Critic

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• I had a friend who said, "You don't have an internal critic. You have an internal sadist."

  Libba Bray

  Said, Internals

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• Each of us can be a leader. We need to remember that the mantle of leadership is not the cloak of comfort, but the robe of responsibility. Perhaps our service is to youth. If so, I caution: 'Youth needs fewer critics and more models.' One hundred years from now it will not matter what kind of a car we drove, what kind of a house we lived in, how much we had in the bank account, nor what our clothes looked like. But the world may be a little better because we were important in the life of a boy or a girl.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Girl, Responsibility, Boys

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• You know, I didn't write my books for critics and scholars. I wrote them for students and artists. When I hear how much my work has meant to them--well, I can't tell you how happy that makes me. That means that this great stuff of myth, which I have been so privileged to work with, will be kept alive for a whole new generation. That's the function of the artists, you know, to reinterpret the old stories and make them come alive again, in poetry, painting, and now in movies.

  Joseph Campbell

  Book, Mean, Writing

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• It's not the critic that counts.

  Theodore Roosevelt

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• The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Church, Tools, Guides

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• Critics have always questioned whether players like Pele from the 50s could play today. Lionel Messi could play in the 1950s and the present day, as could Di Stefano, Pele, Maradona, Cruyff because they are all great players. Lionel Messi without question fits into that category.

  Alex Ferguson

  Player, Today, Messi

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• We have to start thinking of America as a family. We have to stop screeching screeching at each other, stop hurting each other, and instead start caring for, sacrificing for and sharing with each other ... We cannot move forward if cynics and critics swoop down and pick apart anything that goes wrong, to a point where we lose sight of what is right, decent and uniquely good about America.

  Colin Powell

  Hurt, Moving, Sacrifice

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• My fellow critics and I may occasionally fault a movie for departing, in detail or in spirit, from its literary source, but the grousing of a few adult pedants is nothing compared to the wrath of several million bookish 10-year-olds. Their presumed demands, and the hovering spirit of Harry's creator, J. K. Rowling, inhibit this movie as it did the first Potter film.

  A. O. Scott

  Wrath, Years, Adults

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• There will be a competition among critics for the best Paris Hilton insult. Here's my first: Her attention span is so short that she can't even maintain her concentration while running away from a psycho... Maybe the ultimate insult is that she makes her co-star Elisha Cuthbert seem, by comparison, the sexiest and most interesting actress in modern cinema.

  David Edelstein

  Running, Stars, Paris

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• You won't be reading reviews of the dystopian sci-fi flick Aeon Flux in the papers today because it wasn't screened for the press-and, given that it cost the GDP of a small country and that Charlize Theron and the director, Karyn Kusama, are critics' darlings, this could mean but one thing: A stinker. A weapon of mass destruction. A planet-killer. Folks, I'll never understand studios. Aeon Flux is not that terrible.

  David Edelstein

  Country, Reading, Mean

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• A critic often has to play the role of coroner, dissecting a work to find out why it died (or never lived).

  David Edelstein

  Play, Roles, Died

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• In the movies first impressions are everything. Or, to put it less drastically, in the movies there are no later impressions without a first impression, because you will have stopped watching. Sometimes a critic persuades you to give an unpromising-looking movie a chance, but the movie had better convey the impression pretty quickly that the critic might be right.

  Clive James

  Giving, First Impression, Might

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• Critics are giving marks for originality, acting, photography and scripting, while mass audiences are more drawn to familiarity of genre, stars they would like to have sex with or plots that are more likely to make their dates have sex with them. Reviewers are doing their day's work, cinema-goers are escaping from theirs: this leads to an inevitable difference of response. It is, though, wrong to conclude that reviewers are completely useless. Books, movies and shows may be critic-proof, but the egos and psyches of the people who make them very rarely are.

  Mark Lawson

  Photography, Sex, Stars

  "Who cares what the reviews say?" by Mark Lawson, www.theguardian.com. May 24, 2006.

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• Recently, I took my son to see The Haunted Mansion, which was one of the worst things (I hesitate even to call it a movie) that I have ever seen. He thought it was better than Finding Nemo and we had a fruitless argument which I'm sure made him acutely aware of the disadvantages of having a film critic for a dad.

  A. O. Scott

  Dad, Son, Film Critics

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