Reviewers Quotes

• Whenever a text-book is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. It it were easy, the book ought to be burned.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Education, Real, Book

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• Critics should find meaningful work.

  John Grisham

  Meaningful, Should, Critics

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• I picture several reviewers of my own books as passing a long future lodged between Brutus and Judas in the jaws of Satan.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Book, Long, Brutus

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.9, W. W. Norton & Company

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• As long as there are readers to be delighted with calumny, there will be found reviewers to calumniate.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Long, Calumny, Found

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1834). “Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions”, p.41

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• If reviewers don't mention your work, it's probably better than if they do.

  Roger Deakins

  Working It, Ifs

  "Cinematography Roundtable: Roger Deakins and 5 Other Top DPs on Angelina Jolie's Directing Style, Shooting Through Hurricanes and Film vs. Digital". Interview with Gregg Kilday and Carolyn Giardina, www.hollywoodreporter.com. December 2, 2014.

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• I would be far more critical than any reviewer could be of my own work. So I simply don't read them.

  John Banville

  Would Be, Critical, My Own

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• Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.

  Tibor Fischer

  Book, Reviews, Wells

  "Better than Amis?" by Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2003.

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• Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

  John Steinbeck

  Giving, Unqualified, Praise

  "The Affluent Society". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Introduction, 1977.

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• [O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Writing, Want, Obscure

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• Let's face it: Sadness and evil are always more believable than happiness and love. When a movie reviewer calls a film "realistic," everyone knows what that means--it means the movie has an unhappy ending.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Sadness, Mean, Evil

  Chuck Klosterman (2012). “Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural North Dakota”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

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• I like big books and I cannot lie. You other readers can’t deny That when a kid walks in with The Name of the Wind Like a hardbound brick of win. Story bling. Wanna swipe that thing Cause you see that boy is speeding Right through the book he’s reading. I’m hooked and I can’t stop pleading. Wanna curl up with that for ages, All thousand pages. Reviewers tried to warn me. But with that plot you hooked Me like Bradley. Ooh, crack that fat spine. You know I wanna make you mine. This book is stella ’cause it ain’t some quick novella.

  Jim C. Hines

  Lying, Book, Reading

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• At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Writing, Self, Risk

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• You know reviewers, they are the wind in their own sails.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Wind, Sail, Knows

  Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.471, Faber & Faber

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• The plot is so tired that even this reviewer, who in infancy was let drop by a nurse with the result that she has ever since been mystified by amateur coin tricks, was able to guess the identity of the murderer from the middle of the book.

  Dorothy Parker

  Book, Tired, Nurse

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

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• Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple careers: I've been a teacher. A chauffeur. A chef. An interior decorator. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. I’ve been a painter. A personal shopper. An accountant and a banker. I’ve been a beautician. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. A movie reviewer. A nurse. A psychologist. A negotiator. An I have a Ph. D in How to Pretend Like You Don’t Mind.

  Terry McMillan

  Mother, Teacher, Careers

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• The thing we call critics are not really reviewers, they are not really critics. They don't have the discipline to write what we would term as critique - it's really just reviewers. They have a common man kind of taste. If you watch them overall, they are not different from the box-office. That's my view.

  Ang Lee

  Writing, Men, Views

  Interview with Karan Johar, www.hindustantimes.com. November 4, 2012.

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• I have learned not to read reviews. Period. And I hate reviewers. All of them, or at least all but two or three. Life is much simpler ignoring reviews and the nasty people who write them. Critics should find meaningful work.

  John Grisham

  Meaningful, Hate, Writing

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• Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  People, Criticism, Talent

  Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton Lecture 1 (1811 - 1812)

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• Over the years, during television interviews, whenever the host or the reviewer or whoever gets cynical and nasty with me, I will behave accordingly. I will defend myself.

  John Lydon

  Years, Cynical, Television

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• The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book.

  Toni Morrison

  Pain, Book, Insulting

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• I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Moving, Reading, Effort

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “The Luzhin Defense”, p.7, Penguin UK

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• The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable.

  Carroll O'Connor

  Artist, Enemy, Scientism

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• We don't really need reviewers, just first-night reporters who will tell us faithfully whether or not the audience liked the show.

  Carroll O'Connor

  Night, Needs, Firsts

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• I think reviewers have become particularly venomous because, in a way, the power has been sucked from them. A 15-year-old can write a review on the Internet and it means as much as Roger Ebert's review, and that just makes Roger Ebert mad, so he comes out harder and stronger.

  Todd Phillips

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was.

  Jackson Pollock

  Mean, Artist, Abstract Painting

  Interview, New Yorker, 5 Aug. 1950

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