"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

"A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier." - Gustave Flaubert, letter (1846)

"The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces." - Anatole France, La Vie litt'raire

"To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." - Elbert Green Hubbard

"Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense." - Samuel Johnson

"A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant." - Wilson Mizner

"A drama critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned." - George Bernard Shaw

"Criticism is a step towards social reform." - Unknown

"To be a critic, you have to have maybe three percent education, five percent intelligence, two percent style, and ninety percent gall and egomania in equal parts." - JUDITH CRIST, quoted in John Robert Colombo's Popcorn in Paradise

"You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables." - SAMUEL JOHNSON, quoted in James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson

"Nature fits all her children with something to do,
He who would write and can't write, can surely review."
- JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, A Fable for Critics

"You puff the poets of other days,
The living you deplore.
Spare me the accolade: your praise
Is not worth dying for."
- MARTIAL, Epigrams

"People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise." - W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, Of Human Bondage

"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike."
- ALEXANDER POPE, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

"Works of art are of an infinite lonelines s and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them." - RAINER MARIA RILKE, Letters to a Young Poet

"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art." - SUSAN SONTAG, Against Interpretation

"A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car." - KENNETH TYNAN, in New York Times Magazine

"You say that you have a great respect for truth. Is that why you always place yourself at such a respectful distance from it?" - Escriva

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." - Parker, Dorothy