top of page
Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson

"There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic."

Standard 
 Customized
"There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic."

Exlpore more Criticism quotes

Quote_1.png
Amber Hurdle

"He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals."

Quote_1.png
Amber Hurdle

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

Quote_1.png
Amber Hurdle

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

Quote_1.png
Amber Hurdle

"Many reviews are useless because, while purporting to condemn the book, they only reveal the reviewer's dislike of the kind to which it belongs. Let bad tragedies be censured by those who love tragedy, and bad detective stories by those who love the detective story. Then we shall learn their real faults. Otherwise we shall find epics blamed for not being novels, farces for not being high comedies, novels by James for lacking the swift action of Smollett. Who wants to hear a particular claret abused by a fanatical teetotaller, or a particular woman by a confirmed misogynist?"

Quote_1.png
Amber Hurdle

"One of the main reasons and excuses behind every religious failure is a FALSE PROMISE."

Quote_1.png
Amber Hurdle

"I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen."

Quote_1.png
Amber Hurdle

"Some who have read the book, or at any rate reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no reason to complain, since I have similar opinions of their work, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."

Quote_1.png
Amber Hurdle

"People have boldness to criticize but not to sensitize."

Quote_1.png
Amber Hurdle

"Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse."

Quote_1.png
Amber Hurdle

"To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own."

Explore more quotes by Anne Stevenson

Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson
"Sylvia Plath was just a month and a half older than I, and when she committed suicide I was only 30 - and very shocked and sorry. I never knew her personally."
Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson
"I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy."
Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson
"Peter Lucas and I live in Durham but spend a great of time in North Wales, where we have a cottage in the mountains, and in Vermont, USA, with my sister - who is a children's writer married to a poet."
Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson
"My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy person, quite the contrary, no one enjoys laughing more than I do."
Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson
"I work very hard on all my poems, but most of the work consists of trying not to sound as if I had worked. I try to make them sound as natural as possible, but within a quite strict form, which to my ears has a lot to do with musical rhythm and sound."
Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson
"A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties."
Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson
"I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me."
Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson
"I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that is, I try to express complicated but I hope real emotions as simply as possible. But that doesn't mean the poems are simple, just that they are as truthful as I can make them."
Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson
"I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were."
Quote_1.png
Anne Stevenson
"Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions."
bottom of page