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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• 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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• 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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• What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.

  Tom Robbins

  Evil, Mind, Trying

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• The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Editors, Horror, Critics

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.90, Macmillan

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• I don’t believe that a reviewer or a critic can really criticize well unless he can praise well.

  James Dickey

  Believe, Praise, Criticize

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• It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Reviews

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.34, RosettaBooks

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• I think that curiosity happened on these reviews where I was just a guest of the reviewer, because it introduced me to new cuisines and to the idea of cooking as a mechanism for studying other cultures and understanding other parts of the world.

  Ted Allen

  Thinking, Ideas, Other Cultures

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

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• Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.

  Lenny Bruce

  Time, Sarcasm, Thinking

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• Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes.

  John O'Hara

  Sex, Book, Writing

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• (on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Writing, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.465, Routledge

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• When you are out of favor, so to speak, it's not just the reviewers. It's the editors, the publishers, they don't want you anymore, you're just gone and you've been written out of history as effectively as the old Stalinists would write someone else out, take their photograph out of a book.

  Frederic Tuten

  Book, Writing, Editors

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Stupid, Race, Despair

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.946, Delphi Classics

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• Under true peer-review...a panel of reviewers must accept a study before it can be published in a scientific journal. If the reviewers have objections the author must answer them or change the article to take reviewers' objections into account. Under the IPCC review process, the authors are at liberty to ignore criticisms.

  Richard Lindzen

  Liberty, Criticism, Answers

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• Some movie I was in, I forget which one, some awful little movie, a reviewer said, What is Jessica Walter doing in this movie? And I said, Hello? Trying to make a living?

  Jessica Walter

  Trying, Littles, Awful

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• Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Editors, Rejection

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

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• Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

  William S. Burroughs

  Book, Writing, Exercise

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

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• Some of the reviewers wanted less. Some wanted lots more. Some wanted lots more of something else. But these strips are exactly what they are.

  Art Spiegelman

  Wanted

  "Art Spiegelman: The Sky Is Falling". Interview with Steven Heller, www.aiga.org. October 01, 2004.

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• I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.

  Anton Chekhov

  Reading, Years, Editors

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