150 Quotes About Reviews

For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it.

Those who can write, write.Those who can't, criticize.

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

[Blog post, March 10, 2014]

No one has ever questioned the credentials of a critic who writes a rave notice. (249)

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.

Have you ever gotten a bad review, Master Huud?""Hundreds of them.""Do they hurt?""Of course. But you get over it. Critics are just people, lad. They're entitled to their opinions. They're not the enemy.""Who is the enemy?""Censors.

There is something essentially ridiculous about critics, anyway: what is good is good without our saying so, and beneath all our majesty we know this.