top of page
Exlpore more Criticism quotes

"I suspect that most authors don't really want criticism, not even constructive criticism. They want straight-out, unabashed, unashamed, fulsome, informed, naked praise, arriving by the shipload every fifteen minutes or so."

"There is no such thing as constructive criticism. There is constructive advice, constructive guidance, constructive counsel, encouragement, suggestion, and instruction. Criticism, however, is not constructive but a destructive means of faultfinding that cripples all parties involved. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise."

"Learn to brush off criticism as easily as you brush aside hollow compliments."

"The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book."

"Some poems are written great, some poems are written swell. But then there are poems that could win a prize in Hell."

"And we hate this possibility in movies; we hate this "both" shit. "Both" comes off as sloppy characterization, muddy filmmaking, lack of focus. ... But I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it required of us an empathetic confrontation with the exact same muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours' fucking relief from."
Explore more quotes by H. L. Mencken

"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good."

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."

"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."

"No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."

"Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself."

"Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love."
bottom of page