#critic

The traveler from Europe edges into it like a tiny Jonah entering an inconceivably large whale, slipping past the straits of Belle Isle into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where five Canadian provinces surround him, for the most part invisible. Then he goes up the St. Lawrence and the inhabited country comes into view, mainly a French-speaking country with its own cultural traditions. To enter the United States is a matter of crossing an ocean; to enter Canada is a matter of being silently swallowed by an alien continent. ↗

— Northrop Frye

#identity #literary-criticism #imagination

I have learned to be kinder to myself, to imagine that I am my own best friend, whispering comforting words in my ear and drowning out the voices of Self-Doubt and Self-Criticism. I have learned to acknowledge and appreciate the 98% that I have achieved instead of the 2% that I didn’t. ↗

— Roz Savage

#best-friends #criticism #kindness #self-doubt #imagination

A critic is a legless man who teaches other people to run ↗

— Channing Pollock

#critic #criticism #inspirational #writer #writers-quotes

Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#intelligence

If there was one life skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity ↗

— Josh Lanyon

#life #life

Being a critic is a terrific method for killing your love of art ↗

— David Toop

#critics #art

On Art Garfunkel - He makes Paul Simon look like LL Cool J. ↗

— Ian Gittins

#criticism #ll-cool-j #music-humor #paul-simon #simon-and-garfunkel

The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#art-criticism #critics #insight #knowledge #music-criticism

The House Beautiful is, for me, the play lousy. ↗

— Dorothy Parker

#review #the-new-yorker #beauty

To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. ↗

— Cornel West

#critical-reflection #improve #individuality #jazz #jazz-freedom-fighter