A critic once described me as an ‘amiable beanpole.’ I got it printed on a T-shirt. – John Gordon Sinclair
Jim Longenbach, poet, critic, and my husband, is always passing along life-changing books for me to read. – Joanna Scott
If I wasn’t a film-maker, I’d be a film critic. It’s the only thing I’d be qualified to do. – Quentin Tarantino
Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
My primary ambition is to be a fiction writer… Being a critic wasn’t an aspiration of mine. – Walter Kirn
Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility. – Susan Sontag
There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife – a tyrannical midwife. – Stephen Spender
Our pasta primavera was born when I promised fresh pasta with tomatoes and basil to critic Craig Claiborne, but we had no tomatoes. – Sirio Maccioni
You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet. – Theophile Gautier
For the critic, the word ‘best’ is like a grenade without a pin: Toss it around too freely, and you’re likely to get your hand blown off. – Terry Teachout
A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it. – Walter Bagehot