|
878ecad
|
As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.
|
|
critics
literary-criticism
reviewers
writing
|
kurt Vonnegut |
|
074f6ac
|
Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.
|
|
excellence
inspirational
life
philosophy
truth
wisdom
critics
|
Robert A. Heinlein |
|
554d468
|
A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, and in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man's distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man's own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? he had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.
|
|
beowulf
criticism
critics
fantasy
literature
|
J.R.R. Tolkien |
|
3170045
|
You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything
|
|
critics
love
|
Gustave Flaubert |
|
b17a952
|
The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds
|
|
art-criticism
critics
insight
knowledge
music-criticism
music-journalism
wisdom
writers
writing
|
Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
|
71c60e3
|
The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination
|
|
art
artist
criticism
critics
genius
genius-stupidity
imagination
nerd
nerdery
nerds
|
Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
|
1b4e3ec
|
Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators
|
|
academics
art
art-history
artists
arts
creativity
criticism
critics
|
Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
|
8bd2a2a
|
"The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment." ( )"
|
|
critics
detachment
insight
writing
|
Raymond Chandler |
|
ad7788f
|
With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected and tortured after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves again. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me?
|
|
books
breach
bright
bullying
burning
conform
constitution
cowardice
creativity
critics
different
dread
education
equality
examiners
fliers
free
grabbers
happiness
image
imagination
imaginative-creators
intellectual
intelligence
judge
judgment
jumpers
knowers
mind
moutains
racers
rights
runners
school
snatchers
swimmers
target
tinkerers
torture
unfamiliar
weapons
|
Ray Bradbury |
|
df53747
|
Not a moment passes these days without fresh rushes of academic lemmings off the cliffs they proclaim the political responsibilities of the critic, but eventually all this moralizing will subside.
|
|
critics
lemmings
|
Harold Bloom |
|
79aa403
|
I want to say to the literature teacher who remains wilfully, even boastfully ignorant of a major element of contemporary fiction: you are incompetent to teach or judge your subject. Readers and students who do know the field, meanwhile, have every right to challenge your ignorant prejudice. Rise, undergraduates of the English departments! You have nothing to lose but your A on the midterm!
|
|
critics
fantasy
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
010828b
|
Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be.
|
|
critics
first-person-narrative
writing-life
|
John Irving |
|
607a587
|
These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers' faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made.
|
|
critics
flaws
jackasses
pens
tails
tubs
writing
|
Jonathan Swift |