Things don't just fall into place because you have a dream. You're always going to have those negative thoughts. Our minds love to play with us - we're going to be our own worst critics - but I just say to myself, 'File it back.' I just try to bring any negative thoughts to light and deal with them, so I can file them away.
Well, I'm not a critic, I'm just a worker. So, I'm always grateful for anything the critics say - good or bad.
It would not be fair to the critics of Rotary, who include some of the most brilliant of the British and American writers, to charge them with prejudice.
I have been extremely lucky with reviewers and critics throughout my career.
But the truth is that critics are by definition critical. That's their job.
Just like I have my critics, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson has critics, and I was one of the biggest 'Hey man, you're never here' guys around, but not anymore. He's completely committed to WWE.
I could never do a show, or be a personality like Howard Stern, where you take all that heat from critics. What he does, he does, but the critical heat would crucify me.
The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff.
I don't think the critics could understand what we were doing.
We're all our own worst critics and so hard on ourselves, but for me, my biggest insecurity is my arms. I just hate the tops of them. I work out and they still never look good enough for me. So, over the years I've learned to dress to make myself feel better.
By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.
I learned a lot about critics, not to really take them too seriously about movies.
Movies are hard work. The public doesn't see that. The critics don't see it. But they're a lot of work. A lot of work.
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.
When my time on earth is gone, and my activities here are passed, I want they bury me upside down, and my critics can kiss my ass!
In truth, even if they have an imperfect insight into their own methods, I still slightly mistrust writers of fiction who are assured literary critics; it makes me suspect that they favour the word over the world it should describe. Such scribes fall victim too easily to the solecism of equating style with morality.
I suspect that one of capitalism's crucial assets derives from the fact that the imagination of economists, including its critics, lags well behind its own inventiveness, the arbitrariness of its undertaking and the ruthlessness of the way in which it proceeds.
The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.
If critics of 'readable fiction' want literature to change the ways people dream, they need first to come down from the mountain and speak to the people.
I've encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a lot of skepticism, but it seems to be more a matter of inertia than it is of people having some real reason for thinking something else.
Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.
Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans. But there is nothing 'mere' about symbols.
Because the New Testament provides the primary historical source for information on the resurrection, many critics during the 19th century attacked the reliability of these biblical documents.
But critics of the war have no reason to regret their views.
The critic has to do more of what the book critics and art critics have done in the past. Which is give you a context for understanding the restaurant, give you a better way to appreciate it, give you the tools to go in there and be a more informed diner who can get more pleasure out of the experience.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.
I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.
Critics have a job to do. They do not criticise you without reason.
So I haven't thought about the critics for a long time.
The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.
Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.
Lionel Richie told me forget about the critics. But if you come back with hit after hit, you don't have to worry about anything.
You have to channel the interpretation and performance into 100 people. And with the audience, the critics.
'Climb Every Mountain' is a beautiful statement of philosophy. Critics may think 'The Sound of Music' is saccharine, but I think it's profound. The message, that we can't accommodate evil, is just as important today.
I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things.
It's nice when critics say 'Emperor of the Air' is an important book of stories.
