#Critics

"I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all."

"Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs."[Time Magazine, October 31, 1977]"

"The devil's happy when the critics run you off."

"Whatever negative things people think and say about you is enough to bring you down provided you belief that it carries a weight that can push you hard. Don't agree to accept what critics say; be prepared to silence them by doing what they think you can't do!"

"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."

"If you have no critics you'll likely have no success."

"I'd like to emphasize that when a reader finishes a great novel, he will immediately begin looking for another. If someone loves your book, it increases the chance that he or she will look at mine. So there is no competition between writers. Another writer's success helps build a larger readership for all of us."

"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 are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts."