Reviewer Quotes

My mother had not acted for ten years. Not since a reviewer wrote that her portrayal of Lady Macbeth put him in mind of an exasperated society hostess burdened with unmannerly guests who had lost the new tennis balls, left the bathrooms in a mess, and finished the gin. ~ Victoria Clayton

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer. ~ Richard Holt Hutton

I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I did a play once where a reviewer said, 'Martin Freeman's too nice to play a bad guy.' And I thought: 'Well, bad guys aren't always bad guys, you know?' When I see someone play the obvious villain, I know it's false. ~ Martin Freeman

Any debut novel is usually a case of spitting into the wind - or, just maybe, casting your bread upon the waters. Without an established audience in place, first-time authors have to hope for resonant word of mouth and a receptive reviewer or three. ~ Paul Di Filippo

Book reviewer: Very often a writer who has never been published taking out their frustrations on a writer who has. ~ Raul Ramos Y Sanchez

I couldn't give a sh*t what they have to say. As soon as I go home and see my husband [James Thornton of Holby Blue fame] and pick up my dog and cuddle him, that's all that matters. I couldn't care if some theatre reviewer thinks my American accent sounds a bit Welsh. ~ Joanna Page

What Hitchens should have written is: I wouldn't know the difference between conceptualism and realism, essentially and accidentally ordered causal series, Aristotle and Hume, etc., even if I were intellectually honest; but then, neither will the book reviewer at the New York Times, so who cares? ~ Edward Feser

What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy. ~ Tom Robbins

I think in many ways the problem that my writing would have with an American reviewer is that Americans find difficulty very hard to take. They are inevitably looking for a happy ending. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Life is made up of strange coincidences," said Thorndyke. "Nobody but a reviewer of novels is ever really surprised at a coincidence. ~ R. Austin Freeman

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard. ~ John Steinbeck

The power of the print reviewer is one of those urban myths. There have always been shows that slipped under the critical radar to become popular successes: 'Tobacco Road', 'Abie's Irish Rose' and our old friend 'Spider-Man', which got the worst reviews in theatre history and is still apparently going strong. ~ Ben Brantley

Dear lady, ... dear gentleman, reader, [it's] not right ... to put down this writer on his writing ... And I'll tell you why, too: it hurts, that's why.... People try to understand why writers commit suicide by jumping off boats or by alcoholism or by being heroic continuously or by rope or gun or drug or knife or water, and ... I can tell you straight out, ... it is reading slurring remarks about their writing that drives writers to the grave. Dirty remarks passed by ... dirty but damned nicely educated and very highly-paid ladies and gentlemen have the effect of killing writers. Yes, that's right. Dirty words ... in slick paper magazines read by smart people do assassinate writers. ... And boy let me tell you I am all for it, even when by some ... misunderstanding the dirty words are directed to me rather than to the party really deserving them. Accidents happen, dear clever reviewer or critic, and let it not be said that William Saroyan is one not to see a situation from the point of view of the other party, ... and I shall be the first to defend your right to be critical and even sarcastic, knowing full well that it is not about me and my writing, although my name is by mistake taken in vain by you. ... But go on, go on, do your good clever writing, every one of you, I am home, your are home, and we are each of us not yet on Variety's Necrology list, so if we can't take it, who can? ~ William Saroyan

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Fourth, Tobias is a POLITICIAN?!?!?!? Four, the dauntless legend is a politician. Lame. Lastly, that's it? Tris dies, Tobias doesn't get a girlfriend, get married, anything like that, he lives with his mother. Yay!!!!! ~ Amazon Reviewer

Writers are funny about reviews: when they get a good one they ignore it
but when they get a bad review they never forget it. Every writer I know is the same way: you get a hundred good reviews, and one bad, andyou remember only the bad. For years, you go on and fantasize about the reviewer who didn't like your book; you imagine him as a jerk, a wife-beater, a real ogre. And, in the meantime, the reviewer has forgotten all about the whole thing. But, twenty years later, the writer still remembers that one bad review. ~ Art Buchwald

The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable. ~ Carroll O'Connor

I wouldn't call myself a 'literary critic,' just a book reviewer. ~ Neel Mukherjee

Then I realized that I was falling victim to one of the fallacies of the bad reviewer (whose habits we already discussed at length in yesterday's commentary). I was wishing that Hamid had written a different book than he had. How I might have written this story is completely irrelevant. It would be like dismissing The Godfather because I wished it were a musical. The novel needs to be considered on its own terms. ~ Kevin Guilfoile

Memoirs have at their heart a content that "happened" to someone in real life. Is that what you are itching at in your question, so that if you are a reviewer or you are writing a critique you might feel as if you are stepping on someone's actual face? ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Let's face it: Sadness and evil are always more believable than happiness and love. When a movie reviewer calls a film "realistic," everyone knows what that means
it means the movie has an unhappy ending. ~ Chuck Klosterman

It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book. ~ Edward Abbey

I've seen middle grade books criticized by adult readers for leaving things for the reader to figure out, for not having perfect happily-ever-after endings. They get knocked for being too depressing, for using too many big words, for featuring parental characters who are too clueless. Girl protagonists are "too angry" or "too self-absorbed." The issues raised are "too heavy," the books "too earnest," "too quiet," "too hard," "too far-reaching," "too strange," and it is all too too much for the reader.

Except it's never the readers themselves saying these things.

Our critical discourse in middle grade is sometimes much more about what the reviewer believes children's books should be rather than about engaging with the book itself and the literature as a whole. When we say a book is "too sad," "too scary," "too complicated;" when we demand that endings are perfectly happy and all tied up; when we demand that the themes not be too weighty or the characters not face too much hardship; we are projecting our own biases onto the book, and using them to prescribe what books for this age range can or cannot do. This is nannying, not literary criticism - and it doesn't give kids much credit. ~ Anne Ursu

I would be far more critical than any reviewer could be of my own work. So I simply don't read them. ~ John Banville

The public examination of homosexuality in our contemporary life is still so coated with distasteful moral connotations that even a reviewer is bound to wonder uneasily why he was selected to evaluate a book on the subject, and to assert defensively at the outset that he is happily married, the father of four children and the one-time adornment of his college boxing, track and tennis teams. ~ Sydney J. Harris

What I expect of a movie reviewer is that he should love cinema as much as I do. ~ Patrice Leconte

If a reviewer is beating me up, I just say, 'Oh well, my writing is not to his or her taste.' And that's as far as it goes. Because I will simultaneously read a review where somebody says, 'Oh my God, I had so much fun reading this book and I learned so much.' ~ Dan Brown

I have earned wages as a waitress, a nanny, a librarian, a personnel officer, an agricultural laborer, an advertising secretary, a typesetter, a proofreader, a mental-health-care provider, a substitute teacher, and a book reviewer. In and around the edges of all those jobs I have written poems, stories, and books, books, books. ~ Karen Hesse

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. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings. ~ Michael Dirda

I naively thought I was making a low-budget movie. But, when the film came out, the Daily Variety reviewer at that time who was named Art Murphy described it as an exploitation film. I had never heard that term before. Roger never used it. So that's how I learned that I had made an exploitation film. ~ Stephanie Rothman

I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch. ~ Anton Chekhov

He was the son of this bitchy book reviewer. Totally blasted my first book. Called all my lovely kinksters 'sick' and 'abusive.' So I got my payback by sickly abusing her youngest all night long."
"And you felt guilty about that?"
"Not the sex. The note I sent Mom the next day."
"You sent his mother a note after you seduced her son? What did it say?"
"It said..." Nora began, and paused for a breath. Not one of her prouder moments. "It said, 'Your son gave me five stars last night. And five fingers.'"
"You're smiling."
"I'm trying so hard to feel bad about it. I swear to God I am. ~ Tiffany Reisz

I've read a lot of bad books. I used to review books for a living, and when you're a reviewer you read tons of terrible books. ~ John Green

One white reviewer in 1937 [said he] had difficulty believing that such a town as Eatonville, "inhabited and governed entirely by negroes," could be real. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

How much of a book review is about the reviewer? Sometimes it's mostly about the reviewer! ~ Kathryn Harrison

Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple and even simultaneous careers: I've been a chauffeur. A chef. An interior decorator. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. I've been a painter. A furniture restorer. A personal shopper. A veterinarian's assistant and sometimes the veterinarian. I've been an accountant, a banker and on occasion, a broker. I've been a beautician. A map. A psychic. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. The T.V. Guide. A movie reviewer. An angel. God. A nurse and a nursemaid. A psychiatrist and psychologist. Evangelist. For a long time I have felt like I inadvertently got my master's in How To Take Care of Everybody Except Yourself and then a Ph.D. in How to Pretend Like You Don't Mind. But I do mind. ~ Terry McMillan

Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores. Other times I have joys, when unexpectedly coming upon an outrageous story that may not be altogether a lie, or upon a macabre little thing that may make some reviewer of my more or less good works mad. But always there is present a feeling of unexplained relations of events that I note, and it is this far-away, haunting, or often taunting, awareness, or suspicion, that keeps me piling on. ~ Charles Fort

For Thanksgiving, a quote from my book, The Restaurant Reviewer, with deepest thanks for all the bounty:

In the kitchen here ingredients are cherished. This restaurant remembers that food tastes good. ~ Nao Hauser

My constant fear as a writer as that I will fail to convey the gravity of living. I know that to some degree that sets me up as boorish, but I'll have to live with that, and, honestly, I'd rather err on the side of being "unredeemingly dark," as one reviewer said about blood kin, than on keeping to the sunny side. ~ Mark Powell

While much recent historicist criticism has assumed early nineteenth-century readers attuned to subtle ideological nuances in poetry, actual responses from readers often come closer to clulessness ... It is no surprise that no one understood Blake, but other poets fared not much better ... Coleridge's 'Christabel' was 'the standing enigma which puzzles the curiosity of literary circles. What is it all about?', while another reviewer asked about Shelley, 'What, in the name of wonder on one side, and of common sense on the other, is the meaning of this metaphysical rhapsody about the unbinding of Prometheus?'. Even Keats was condemned for 'his frequent obscurity and confusion of language' and his 'unintelligible quaintness'. Byron, never to be outdone, boasted in 'Don Juan' that not only did he not understand many of his fellow poets, he did not understand himself either: 'I don't pretend that I quite understand / My own meaning when I would be very fine.' ... ~ Andrew Elfenbein

Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book. ~ Tibor Fischer

A good critic is trying to tell you what she has learned about herself from the reading of a particular piece of literature. A bad reviewer is often trying to tell you how smart he is by declaring whether or not he liked a particular book. If he liked the book, then this is the kind of book a superior person likes, and vice versa. He might try to explain why he didn't like it, but the review is really just a tautology. "I didn't like this book because it is bad," is equivalent to "This book is bad because I didn't like it. ~ Kevin Guilfoile

I recently had my graphic novel SONORA PASS reviewed by KIRKUS.
My honest and humble opinion is that the reviewer assigned by KIRKUS should stick to reviewing PHONE BOOKS ! ~ Jaime Olmos

Most writers cannot afford focus groups or A/B testing, but they can ask a roommate or colleague or family member to read what they wrote and comment on it. Your reviewers needn't even be a representative sample of your intended audience. Often it's enough that they are not you. This does not mean you should implement every last suggestion they offer. Each commentator has a curse of knowledge of his own, together with hobbyhorses, blind spots, and axes to grind, and the writer cannot pander to all of them. Many academic articles contain bewildering non sequiturs and digressions that the authors stuck in at the insistence of an anonymous reviewer who had the power to reject it from the journal if they didn't comply. Good prose is never written by a committee. A writer should revise in response to a comment when it comes from more than one reader or when it makes sense to the writer herself. ~ Steven Pinker

It is a fallacy to think that carping is the strongest form of criticism: the important work begins after the artist's mistakes have been pointed out, and the reviewer can't put it off indefinitely with sneers, although some neophytes might be tempted to try: "When in doubt, stick out your tongue" is a safe rule that never cost one any readers. But there's nothing strong about it, and it has nothing to do with the real business of criticism, which is to do justice to the best work of one's time, so that nothing gets lost. ~ Wilfrid Sheed

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. ~ John Irving

[P]ersonally, I know I'd prefer to read an honest review by someone who has no reason to lie, than a book reviewer who has an employer and a publishing house to keep happy. ~ Catherine Ryan Howard

I read the GAO report, and it reminds me of a review I read of Lady Chatterley's Lover in the magazine Field and Stream. The reviewer of that book knew as much about the real purpose of Lady Chatterley's Lover as the GAO knows about the design and development of submarines. ~ Sherry Sontag

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. ~ Toni Morrison

What can you think when one review says "this album is brilliant, and all the songs flow into the utmost brilliant song 'The Upside-Down Cross'" then another review says "this album is brilliant, except for that horrible and pointless song 'The Upside-Down Cross'," and another review will say "Jeffrey really sounds confident and relaxed on this new album", the next reviewer says "Jeffrey sounds more depressed and awful than ever" - these totally contrasting reviews happen all the time! ~ Jeffrey Lewis

An author's great day is releasing your book into the world like a butterfly and having a reviewer come upon it and say…oh, that's lovely! ~ Nanette L. Avery

I am never much interested in the effects of what I write ... I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my ... books. Two times out of three I know something about the reviewer, and in very few cases have I any respect for his judgments. Thus his praise, if he praises me, leaves me unmoved. I can't recall any review that has even influenced me in the slightest. I live in sort of a vacuum, and I suspect that most other writers do, too. It is hard to imagine one of the great ones paying any serious attention to contemporary opinion. ~ H.L. Mencken

Call me cynical, call me cold-hearted, but I don't believe in just knowing and love at first sight. I just don't believe that's love. Love is knowing someone's flaws, habits and pet peeves; having to deal with their grumbling after a bad day; the weird quirks that only surface after several months of being together; living with their morning breath and farts. It's not that gushy, obsessive, in-the-moment feeling. That's a crush. And sure, they can hurt, but you'll get over them. It's not destiny. ~ Emily May

A reviewer once commented that my urban fantasy novels were paced more like epic fantasy, in that they relied on complex world-building and a gradual immersion in the lives of the characters. ~ Laura Anne Gilman

Before she married my father, my mother was a film reviewer for The Akron Beacon Journal - a small newspaper. ~ Jim Jarmusch

Reviewer: 'One of your themes was very similar to one of Beethoven's!' Brahms replied, 'Of course it is. Everyone steals - the important thing is to do it brilliantly. ~ Johannes Brahms

Literary Teas are constantly in a state of flux. The uninitiated gravitates toward the author, the author toward the editor or publisher, the publisher toward the reviewer, and the reviewer, in desperation, toward another drink. ~ Mark Kurlansky

Some book reviewer whose name I forget recently called me a 'vicious misanthrope' ... or maybe it was a 'cynical misanthrope' ... but either way, he (or she) was right; and what got me this way was politics. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I would never quit on a book, even if it's awful. Once I start something, I believe in finishing it. The process of completing such a book will take me that much longer, but I wouldn't abandon it altogether. ("The IndieView," 2017) ~ Cat Ellington

Some movie I was in, I forget which one, some awful little movie, a reviewer said, What is Jessica Walter doing in this movie? And I said, Hello? Trying to make a living? ~ Jessica Walter

I was a latecomer to romance, although I did read gothics. My father used to work for the 'Fort Worth Star-Telegram,' and their book reviewer, author Leonard Sanders, would pass on the gothics for my dad to give to me since Leonard didn't review gothics. I gobbled up books by Mary Stewart, Madeleine Brent, Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney. ~ Lori Wilde

A writer should not review a book. A reviewer should not write. ~ Bhaskar Sharma

The main challenges for a reviewer in peer reviewing:
- Knowing the field to which a certain manuscript belongs very well.
- Having experience in reviewing manuscripts.
- Having abilities to make reviewer's remarks clear.
- Having enough time to evaluate the manuscript in depth.
- Obeying the editorial deadline for doing a review.
- Having a strong interest in scholarly journals.
- Being fluent in English. ~ Eraldo Banovac

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

I will say overwhelmingly what means so much more to me than the opinion of one reviewer are the letters I get from fans who tell me how a particular book has changed their life. ~ Jodi Picoult

I am a bad reporter because everything seems to me worth reporting; and a bad reviewer because every sentence in every book suggests a separate essay. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

The same tantalizing guile and sublime skill ... [The series is] reinforced in its claim to be one of the major literary works of this century ... Only two other writers that this reviewer can think of have each created an entire, discrete and compelling world, a totally believable entity which one might wish to inhabit, and they are Joyce and Proust. It is not pretentious to place Patrick O'Brian in the first canon of literature ... ~ Kevin Myers

An intelligent man or woman willing to make a career of reviewing fiction is hard to come by ... And the temporaries do the work cheaply. Moreover, continuity may be got at the expense of intellectual arthritis; a reviewer who has been at his grisly task for half a lifetime may stiffen into prejudices of every sort, and become too anchylosed to do better than turn his back to a new wave when it rushes down on him. ~ Storm Jameson

I try not to hate anybody. "Hate is a four-letter word," like the bumper sticker says. But I hate book reviewers.

Book reviewers are the most despicable, loathsome order of swine that ever rooted about the earth. They are sniveling, revolting creatures who feed their own appetites for bile by gnawing apart other people's work. They are human garbage. They all deserve to be struck down by awful diseases described in the most obscure dermatology journals.

Book reviewers live in tiny studios that stink of mothballs and rotting paper. Their breath reeks of stale coffee. From time to time they put on too-tight shirts and pants with buckles and shuffle out of their lairs to shove heaping mayonnaise-laden sandwiches into their faces, which are worn in to permanent snarls. Then they go back to their computers and with fat stubby fingers they hammer out "reviews." Periodically they are halted as they burst into porcine squeals, gleefully rejoicing in their cruelty.

Even when being "kindly," book reviewers reveal their true nature as condescending jerks. "We look forward to hearing more from the author," a book reviewer might say. The prissy tones sound like a second-grade piano teacher, offering you a piece of years-old strawberry hard candy and telling you to practice more.

But a bad book review is just disgusting.

Ask yourself: of all the jobs available to literate people, what monster chooses the job of "telling people how bad ~ Steve Hely

I've always liked an easygoing, colloquial style. I like the kind of reviewer who is essentially a fellow reader, an enthusiast, a fan. ~ Michael Dirda

Summer Between Terms"

The day's so calm and muggy I sweat tears,
the summer's cloudcap and the summer's heat...
surely good writers write all possible wrong--
are we so conscience-dark and cataract-blind,
we only blame in others what they blame in us?
(The sentence writes we, when charity wants I...)
It takes such painful mellowing to use error...
I have stood too long on a chair or ladder,
branch-lightening forking through my thought and veins--
I cannot hang my heavy picture straight.
I can't see myself...in the cattery,
the tomcats doze till the litters are eatable,
then find their kittens and chew off their breakable heads.
They told us by harshness to win the stars.

Planes, trains, lorries simmer through the garden,
the reviewer sent by God to humble me
ransacking my bags of dust for silver spoons--
he and I go on typing to go on living.
There are ways to live on words in England--
reading for trainfare, my host ruined on wine,
my ear gone bad from clinging to the ropes.
I'd take a lower place, eat my toad hourly;
even big frauds wince at fraudulence,
and squirm from small incisions in the self--
they live on timetable with no time to tell.
I'm sorry, I run with the hares now, not the hounds.
I waste hours writing in and writing out a line,
as if listening to conscience were telling the truth ~ Robert Lowell

Come now, what's a reviewer?" I reasoned. "One who reads quickly, arrogantly, but never wisely ... ~ David Mitchell